The Software Developer’s Guide to Interviews

I’ve just completed a round of interviews for developer roles, and thought it would be useful to post some thoughts on the process. In particular, I wanted to document what the interview can tell you, the interviewee, about the role and the company you are applying to. There are plenty of guides telling you how to prepare for an interview. I don’t know of any that tell you how to review an interview and use that information to rate the different positions and companies you’re applying to. I suspect most people just go with their gut instinct, which is usually right, but doing a systematic review may help you realise why you prefer one job offer over another.

TL;DR Version

How a company behaves during the recruitment process is a good indicator of its internal culture and what it would be like to work there.

The Ideal Recruitment Process

From my experience of both interviewing and attending interviews for developer roles, a good recruitment process will follow most of these steps:

• Write the Job Specification - The job advertisement will be based on the job specification for the role. This should specify both the essential and desirable skills and experience that applicants should have.  If possible, this should be initially be developed by senior team members for the new role. In my experience however, the larger the company, the less influence the team will have on the job specification. If you are really unlucky, the job specification will simply be a generic description for that role in the company hierarchy, and will have no information on the work you will actually be doing.
• Form an Interview Panel - At a minimum, this should consist of a manager (preferably the manager the new hire will report directly to) and two technical interviewers (as it is harder to bullshit two people at the same time!). I personally prefer to have a member of HR also present – this helps keep the manager honest and prevent them stretching the truth when attempting to attract candidates. This is a particular issue for benefits like remote working that may not be explicitly set out in a contract. In general, the larger the interview panel, the more seriously a company takes recruitment.  A manager may also wear a technical hat, so you may only have 3 people in the panel. The interview panel will typically be responsible for setting the interview questions and defining a criteria for scoring answers.
• CV Screening - The interview panel review the submitted CVs to the job specification and draw up a long list for interviews. This may happen after a closing date for applications, or as applications are received.
• Telephone Screening - This is generally a 15-20 minute call from HR to discuss the application, and confirm that the applicant meets the role requirements.
• Technical Screening – This can be a telephone interview with a senior developer discussing the interviewee’s technical background and asking a number of set technical questions.Alternatively, this may be an online programming assessment such as Codility or an onsite technical test as part of the actual interview.  The aim of the technical screen is to confirm that the applicant does have the necessary skills and experience required for the role.
• Interview - Obviously this should be an interview with the full interview panel, who each assess the interviewee on a number of pre-set questions for which the panel have identified key answer criteria.  Typically, this would include questions on the applicant’s CV and past experience, questions specific to the role requirements and also soft skills, and then a number of technical questions.  The technical questions should cover more than just the basic job requirements – the questions should cover a range of technical levels and start at core, fundamental concepts and build to advanced topics.  The idea is to identify exactly how technically competent the interviewee is.  These questions should stretch every applicant to some extent, and will be long form in format, to allow the interview panel to force the applicant to to deep dives on specific topics. Additionally:
  • The interview described above will typically take 2 hours to complete.
  • For a developer role, this should always include some form of live coding. This is regardless of whether a technical screen was done previously or not – I’ve came across  too many developers who can BS their way through telephone screens and interviews but who are unable to code.
  • At the end, the panel leader should tell the interviewee how and when they hear the outcome of the interview.
• Post Interview Review - The interview panel reviews each applicant immediately following the interview, and scores them using the agreed scoring criteria.  The panel’s aggregate score for each interviewee is used to decide who gets the job.
• Job Offer – The post is offered to the successful applicant and their references are contacted.
• Inform all Applicants – Once the job has been accepted and the references confirmed, HR should respond to all the unsuccessful applicants. This should be within the time period specified at the end of the interview. Ideally, this shouldn’t be longer than a week, but depending on salary negotiations and references, can take longer. For an automated recruitment process, this may be an online status on the candidate’s application and/or an automated email. Preferably, it should a personal response from HR, either by email or, rarely these days, a letter. 

Based on the above outline, you can see that the recruitment process is a major investment by a company over several months, with no guarantee of a successful outcome (i.e. finding a suitably experienced applicant who will accept the position within the given salary limits).  Your interview may only last an hour or two, but by comparing your experience of a company’s recruitment process to the above, you can get a sense of how they value employees, and what it would be like to work there.

Your Interview Review

OK, so you were lucky enough to be shortlisted, and you’ve just had your interview.  Sorry, but now you going to take 10 minutes to review the interview and your experience with the company.  I typically write these review notes at the end of a document I create for each job application, detailing the job requirements, company background and any questions to ask at the interview. I then update the document with any relevant notes each time I have an interview or call with the company, so I can track exactly how the application is progressing.

The points you need to consider are:

• How has the company communicated with you since you applied to the position?  Has it been a single person communicating to you, or several, or an automated process? How did you find it – personal or completely anonymous?  How the company treats you as an applicant will typically reflect how it will treat you as an employee.
• Was there a telephone screening interview with HR?  This is not essential, but is best practice. If it happened, it is confirmation that the company has a defined interview process.  What questions were asked?  You obviously recorded the questions, and any useful information, to prepare for your interview.  From the questions asked, you can also get a good idea of what the panel will focus on the interview, and get a better idea of the work you will actually be doing.
• How were you tested technically?  Were you sufficiently tested? This isn’t a minor point.  If you were not tested on your knowledge and experience, then the people you will be working with will not have been tested either.  That means you will likely be working alongside some developers who don’t have the skills or experience for the job they are doing.  You might be the person who ends up carrying them.
• Did you have to write code as part of your interview process?  If not, this is a major failing. If the company doesn’t know if you can code or not, what is the point hiring you?
• How large was the interview panel?  This is most visible way of assessing how important a company views recruiting developers.  I would be very wary of accepting any offer from a company with less than 3 people on the interview panel, regardless of the size of the company.   Even a one person start-up should be willing to hire HR and technical consultants to have a proper interview panel. If they don’t, they haven’t a clue and you shouldn’t waste your time with them.
• The interview itself:
  • Were the questions asked relevant to the work you believe you will be doing? 
  • Did the questions asked match the advertised job?  If it doesn’t, it is likely that the job advertised won’t be the job you will actually be doing. This means that the team doesn’t have much influence on other departments in the company – this may reflect that the team you will be joining is low down in the company’s hierarchy and priorities.
  • The interviewer’s personality and  behaviour. Were you treated with respect?  Would you like to work with these people?  Remember, in an interview, people are on their best behaviour on both sides of the table.  If you come out of an interview thinking that one of the interviewers was a pain, then they will be most likely be a complete bastard to work with. You need to trust your gut instinct about people.
• How was the outcome communicated to you?  Was it done within the time frame set out by the interview panel?  I’ve known companies to pompously rant on about interviewees not attending interviews. The same companies will then completely ignore all unsuccessful applicants once the post is filled – this is extremely disrespectful behaviour.  If you’ve applied for a position, you will have spent several hours updating your CV, writing a custom covering letter, as well as preparing for and attending interviews.  At the very least, you deserve an email informing you that you have been unsuccessful.

Once you have completed the review, you will have a better idea of the company you may be working with. Obviously, this is only directly useful if you are offered the post, and if you have the option to refuse the offer.  Fortunately, experienced developers typically do receive multiple offers, and having an idea of the company’s culture can help you decide which offer is the best for you.  Also, even if you aren’t successful, it informs you on whether this is a company you want to apply to again in the future.

Case Study: Kana

My recent application with Kana in Belfast was one of the worst recruitment experiences that I ever had. I thought it would be worthwhile to share some notes I made after my interviews with Kana:

• There was a brief telephone screening interview with HR, consisting of some standard questions about my CV and past experience.
• At the first interview, I was interviewed by the team leader and a senior developer from the team I would be joining if successful. There was no one from HR present. It was a standard interview walking through my past experience and testing my technical ability. Overall it lasted around 90 minutes and was reasonably thorough. There was no coding test or any technical screening aside from the questions asked during the interview. There were a number of questions asked around my commute (I live 50 miles away from where the company is located) and my availability to work late that suggested that this is a team under significant pressure. The actual job did sound interesting (a nice mix of technologies,with a mix of both front- and back-end development), but there were a few red flags, like the focus on being able to work late.  The team leader also had a habit of talking over the senior developer that suggested they might be difficult to work with. At the end of the interview I was told I would get feedback about the interview in 2 weeks.
• At the second interview (just under 2 weeks later), I was interviewed by the VP for Development and the Principal Architect.  It lasted approximately 60 minutes.  They asked almost exactly the same questions as had been asked at the first interview. I was also told that the role would involve a significant amount of work with Clojure, and relatively little with .NET, despite the role being advertised as a .NET Developer role with no mention of Clojure in the job description. I found the VP to be very brisk in manner, and the Architect while friendly, came across as extremely bored. Obviously, there were a number of issues here:
  • Why were the same questions being asked again?  Did the second interview panel either not speak to the first, or do they not trust their opinion?  Either way, there is a communication issue here.
  • Again, same focus on my commute and on being able to work long hours.
  • The second panel’s interpretation of the role (more Clojure, less .NET) differed from that of the first interview panel and job advertised.  Who is right?

At the end of the second interview, I was told I would be informed within a week if I had been successful or not. Both interviews were held in January 2015. It is now over 2 months later and I haven’t heard anything from Kana, despite sending a polite email asking for some feedback a few weeks ago.

It will probably come as no surprise, but I wouldn’t recommend applying to Kana based on my experience.

What has your experience been in interviews?  Do you have your own way of reviewing job applications?  Please share in the comments below.

Thanks to Toby Osbourn for reading a draft of this post. You should read Toby’s blog Development Thoughts where he posts great articles on Ruby and web development.

Online Coding Tests with Codility

I spent several hours today on an online coding test for an employer.  This isn’t my first test using Codility. Not only have I done several of the tests before, but I’ve actually recommended they be used in a previous employer, when I was involved in interviewing, So I thought I share some thoughts around approaching these type of tests.  Before I start, please note – I won’t be posting any solutions to the tests I’ve done.  But feel free to try this useful link - http://bit.ly/1wSuukg.

Codility is an online site that allows employers to set online coding tests for prospective developers.  It is effectively an automated screen to ensure that prospective developers have the necessary programming skills for the role. As it can take up a lot of time to arrange telephone calls for technical screening interviews, or onsite technical tests as part of the interview, Codility or the alternative CodeEval, can help save a lot of time.  Obviously, even when using something like Codility, you would still want to have a significant technical element to any subsequent interview.  Tools like Codility are an aid to the interview, but they certainly doesn’t replace it.

The actual test is sent to via an email with a personalized link to Codility.  Typically the link will only be valid for a set period (i.e. 24 hours).  On clicking the link, you are taken to landing page where you can choose to start the test, practice with a demo test or come back later.

Once the online IDE loads, you will be taken through a tour of the IDE features.

Some features in the IDE to be aware of:

• Problem description (left hand panel).
• Custom test cases (bottom of the left hand panel).  This allows you to define test cases for your solution, based on the problem description.
• Code Editor (top right hand panel).
• Countdown timer  (top right hand corner). Note, each task will typically take around 30-40 minutes.
• Select the language to code your solution (top right hand corner). Note, this can be limited by the company setting the test.
• Various buttons to run and submit your solution
• Console window (bottom right hand panel).  This will display the results of your code solution, including from your test cases.

Note, once the test starts, you can’t stop – the tests are time limited. 

The solutions require you to implement an algorithm described in the problem description. You may be asked to develop a solution with regard to performance, as expressed in the Big O Notation.  Check out this primer if it has been a while since you covered Big O notation!  Note, I have also seen a task that required you to correct an existing buggy implementation of an algorithm, so you may not always be starting a solution from scratch.

Now for my thoughts and tips for taking the test.

1. Practice using the demo test and examples on the Codility blog.
2. Refresh your knowledge on algorithms (i.e. sorting algorithm such as BubbleSort, or search algorithms such as BinarySearch), and specifically on Big O Notation.
3. Use the problem description to define and breakdown your solution.  I typically break the problem statement into single sentences and use this as comments to outline and stub out my code solution.  Obvious, but it is easy to get flustered when taking one of these test for the first time.
4. Use your usual IDE to develop your solution. The Codility site wants you to develop your code in their online IDE – I found this a real pain to use, and slow at times. My advice is to create a console application to host your solution code, and to develop in Visual Studio (or your IDE/code editor of choice) on your local machine. This offers a few advantages:

• It is a familiar coding environment that you already know.  The Codility IDE is OK, but it has a few quirks.  For example, I found the custom test cases feature a bit of a pain to use.  There is no learning curve required when you are using your usual IDE editor.
• You can benefit from automatic error highlighting and faster feedback on compilation errors.  The Codility IDE requires you to hit the Run button and then to read and decipher any errors in the console panel.  Your own IDE will typically give you more information about errors, and give it a lot faster.  This is important, as time is limited!
• You can make use of a proper unit testing framework, such as NUnit. As noted above, the test case feature in Codility is clunky, and limits you to only 5 test cases.  Forget that, use NUnit and define as many tests as you need.

I created my test console application when I was going through the demo test, to ensure it was working correctly prior to actually starting the test. For the demo (and also the test tasks), I simply copied the stub method to be developed from the Codility IDE into my test console application, and developed it there.  When I had successfully coded and tested it in Visual Studio, I then copied the completed method into the Codility IDE, and then re-tested before submitting.  Once the solution is submitted, you can modify it or resubmit.

When submitted, the solution is analysed by Codility, and a detailed breakdown of your solution is available to the employer who set the test.  You can check out an example here.  Your result obviously determines whether or not you get called for interview.

Previously, I’ve done quite well in the Codility tests, and actually enjoyed taking them.  They are a bit like code katas. Today’s test, however, was a disaster.   There were 3 tasks to be completed, instead of the usual 1, so that the total time for the test was 2 hours.  I took far too long on the first task, which meant I had to rush on the second task.  After spending some time on the second task,  I ended up having barely anytime at all for the last test, so I doubt I’ll get called back. Entirely my own fault.  Interestingly, the second task required the correction of a buggy implementation of an algorithm. I suspect this was deliberately added by the employer as the role I was applying for would involve dealing with legacy code.

Despite today’s cock-up, I still like the Codility tests, and would certainly like to see them more widely used – they’re a lot better than the usual FizzBuzz whiteboard exercise!

Update

Despite the problems I had with the Codility test, I was called for an interview. I was offered a job, but not the position I had actually applied for.  After some deliberation, I declined as I didn’t feel the offered job would push me enough.  But I was very happy to be given the opportunity!

Career Options for the Older Developer

I recently read a Hacker News post asking what happens to older developers, and thought it would be useful to summarize the various options discussed across the 60+ page post.  As I’m in my late 30’s is a topic I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about personally.

1. Become a Senior Developer/Architect - This is the route that majority of developers will follow. The main advantages are that you keep on coding (hopefully) and you continue to learn new skills and technologies.  The disadvantages are that as you grow more senior, you are increasing pulled away from development into team management (see below).  There are also the issues of burnout (seeing the same mistakes being made over & over again in new technologies).  You also need to beware of being side-lined into maintaining legacy systems, and having your skills and experience becoming less relevant. Senior developers will typically also see their pay plateau, and will earn significantly less than some of other career options listed below.
2. Move into Management – Some developers will expect to move through the progression of team leader and project manager into an IT management role.  Indeed, many (too many) organisations encourage/force developers along this path, simply because they don’t have senior technical career path. The advantages are that is such a common career path, and will generally be associated with higher pay.  The disadvantages – the higher the management ladder you climb the less coding you do. Also, being a manager is an  extremely demanding role, requiring a very different mindset to that of a developer.
3. Consultancy/Contractor – This option is particularly popular due to the current demand for programmers. The main advantages are obviously the higher salary you can command as a consultant/contractor. You get to work on the projects and technologies you’re interested in, generally for short engagements. In theory, you no longer need to worry about department politics. The major disadvantage is the greater risk you’re exposed to when you’re effectively self-employed. 
4. Move into other Sectors - Some developers will step out of development and move into other IT related roles (System Security, Testing, Business Analysis), while others still will move into different fields where their skills and experience are relevant (i.e. sales, scientific and engineering roles). 
5. Become an Entrepreneur – This is particularly popular at the minute, with a growing number of developers moving to startup their own company.  You build a product or a SaaS solution or service company.  You may gain financially, or you may not.  At least you are your own boss (or maybe you’re really at the beck & call of all your customers). It will definitely require a significant investment of time and possibly money to become your primary means of making money.

Know of a career path I’ve missed?  Let me know below in the comments, or ping me on Twitter (@AndyParkhill)

P.S. I tried really hard to find a gender neutral icon for a programmer, and the image of the Lego mini-figure above was the best I could come up with.  I’m not particularly happy with it, as it uses the usual lazy stereotype of software developers (male, geeky).  If you know of a better icon or image I can use, please get in touch!

* Photo by wiredforlego used under Creative Commons

Jobs Feed for NI Developers

Sorry for the break in blogging recently, I’ve been busy!! 

I have finally gotten around to publishing an RSS feed delivering details of all current job vacancies for developers in Northern Ireland.  This initial draft includes permanent job vacancies from the following sites:

• RSS feeds from the main jobs sites in NI – NIJobs.com, nijobfinder.co.uk and SyncNI.com (formerly the NI Tech Blog).  I will also look at RecruitNI.com – the site seems have to improved from the god awful mess it used to be.
• The Job Centre website.

In future, I hope to add the following sources:

• Job feeds based on the careers pages of the major local IT and software companies, taken from here and other sources.

I also would like to add the following functionality:

• Detect and remove duplicate entries.
• Record details of the vacancies in a publically accessible database to allow people to generate custom reporting on key skills, the number and frequency of vacancies in particular companies, etc.
• Add a temporary jobs feed.

The idea for this feed came from a personal RSS feed I have put together a few years ago.  This initial draft is using Yahoo Pipes to aggregate the various feeds together, and Feed43 for monitoring pages that do not have RSS feeds enabled.  In my personal feed, I use Page2RSS in my personal feed, but unfortunately it generates spurious RSS items if a site uses a revolving image background.

If you have any suggestions for the feed (companies to add, additional functionality), please let me know.  The Jobs feeds can be found here, or via the menu option above.  The list of job sites/companies I’m tracking via the feed can be seen here.

The Weekly Links 7

This is the 7th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Outlook .PST File Tools – Jean-Christophe Cimetiere describes two open source tools, available on CodePlex.com, for working with Outlook .PST files.
• TekPub ASP.NET MVC 2 Starter Kit – Rob Conery announces the release of version 0.5 of the starter kit.
• Dropbox API and RestSharp for a C# developer - Damian Karzon describes how to connect to the Dropbox API from C# code, using the RestSharp client.
• SquishIt – The Friendly ASP.NET JavaScript and CSS Squisher - Justin Etheredge describes how to use SquishIt, a JS and CSS minimiser.

Information

• Code Contracts Part 2 – Preconditions - Part 2 of a series from Kevin Hazzard on Code Contracts.
• Code Metrics: Measuring LoC in .NET applications – Gunner Peipman has a useful article on measuring LoC in our solutions, part of a series of articles around this topic.
• C#: System.Lazy<T> and the Singleton Design Pattern - James Michael Hare describes how to implement the Singleton design pattern more cleanly using the Net 4.0's new System.Lazy<T> type.
• Test-Driven Javascript – James Shore shows how to develop your JavaScript code using the TDD methodology.
• Video – Code Leaders and Beautiful Teams – Roy Osherove offers a video on team leadership and beautiful teams that he gave at QCON London earlier this year.
• Creating Enterprise Search Metadata Property Mappings with PowerShell – Corey Roth offers another handy tip.

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.

Events in the coming week include:

• Going Deeper into Visual Studio 2010 – Another MW-MTUG event in Derry on Wednesday 2nd June.
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Hub – A full day event for mobile developers in Dublin next Thursday (3rd June).
• Idea Hacking #1 Storytelling – A new type of event for Derry on Thursday 3rd June.
• Going Deeper into Visual Studio 2010 – NIMTUG hosts Paul Fallon to give his VS2010 talk in Belfast on Thursday 3rd June.

Careers

• Citi Group (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Graduate roles with initial 12 week training programme.  Roles in Programming, Application Support or Quality Assurance, based in Belfast.
• Blue Zinc IT – Technical Support Specialist, based in Holywood.
• Fidesa – Software Developers required for the company’s Belfast office.
• First Derivatives – Various developer and consultant roles, based in Newry, Belfast and further afield.
• Queens University, Belfast – Various engineering roles in the fields of data security, network security and intelligent surveillance systems in the Centre for Secure Information Technologies
• Export Technologies - .NET Developers required for this Belfast startup.
• Aepona – Several roles available, based in Belfast.
• Southern Regional College – Web Application Developer, based at the Portadown campus.

The Weekly Links 6

This is the 6th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Identity Finder – An article on LifeHacker.com describes this very useful tool. 
• .NET Framework cleanup and setup verification tools - Aaron Stebner announces the release of new versions of these tools for .NET 4.0.  I didn’t even know that these tools existed within the .NET framework!
• OpenWrap – Robert Pickering describes on his blog the OpenWrap project, an open source package management system for .NET projects.
• RAMMap v1.0 – The SysInternals guys have released a new tool to  help you analyze your use of RAM memory.

Information

• Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers – Scott Guthrie blogs about a new community site that allows you to download Visual Studio 2010 themed images that you can use for your Windows desktop background.
• Most Common ASP.NET Support issues – Another Scott, Hanselman this time, has an article on the most common issues behind support calls for ASP.NET.
• JavaScript local alias pattern – Betrand Le Roy describes how to implement a common local alias pattern form JavaScript in C'#.  Neat!
• How to: Create an OpenSearch Provider for SharePoint – Corey Roth has another great time saving tips for SharePoint 2010.
• Code Contracts Part 1- Kevin Hazzard starts a series of blog posts on Microsoft Code Contracts

Events

You can now check out developer events in Northern Ireland using my calendar.  I have further work planned for the calendar, and the format of these posts. 

Events in the coming week include:

• Barcamp Belfast – The barcamp is being held in Belfast this Saturday (17th).
• DevDays 2010 (Belfast) – Tuesday 25th May, in Belfast.
• DevDays 2010 (Dublin) – Thursday 27th May, in Dublin.

Careers

• ASG Software Solutions – Quality Assurance Analyst required for the Belfast office.
• Latens – Senior Software Engineer and Software Engineers being recruited by the Belfast firm.
• Terex Corporation (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – A Data Warehouse Architect required for the Dungannon office.
• GE – A number of development and technical support positions are available with the company in Lisburn.
• Larsen and Toubro Infotech (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Various positions available for the company’s new office in NI.

The Weekly Links 5

This is the 5th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• Style Cop – Version 4.4 of the code style checker (and it is now open source!) is available for download.
• Solution Converter – a much needed tool to convert between the various Visual Studio solution formats (2005, 2008, and 2010).
• PowerShell Community Extensions – V2.0 of this useful extensions library is released.

Information

• Build Tools Roundup For .NET Systems – Derick Bailey of the LostTechies.com blog site gives an overview of the various build automation tools available for .NET developers.  Just to note, PSake does it for me every time.
• JavaScript Coding Standards – Simon Ince announces the release of Microsoft’s first public coding standards for JavaScript.  The standards are aimed at developers using the Ajax Control Toolkit.
• The Power of Enum – Jason Sonmez looks at the use of the humble enumeration in .NET to produce elegant code.
• Easy creation of code generators in Visual Studio 2008 - Sebastian Negomireanu begins a series of posts that look at code generation in VS2008.  A welcome relief from the tsunami of posts on VS2010 following the recent launch.
• Use Extension method to write cleaner code – Fredrik Normen looks at using extension methods to write cleaner, more maintainable code.  In his article, he gives an excellent breakdown of the various steps in refactoring as well.  It ties in well with the number of links in last week’s roundup on extension methods.
• Make your XML strongly-typed – I’m including this link  as much for the excellent design of Doug Rathbone’s blog, Diary of a Ninja… , as for the article content!  It puts my blog to shame!
• Updated C# all-in-one file - Kirill Osenkov offers an updated file demonstrating the entire C# syntax.
• Starting and using Git successfully – Jimmy Boggart has posted an article on how to make the best use of the popular distributed version control system.
• All About Assemblies – A Code Project article on how to manage assemblies.
• Growl for Windows Target for NLog – A fantastic article  for developers on how to log output to a custom notifications using Growl and NLog.
• And finally, a spoof post on the history of Programming Languages.

SharePoint Information

• New advance SharePoint 2010 training material released – an overview of the training available from Microsoft on SharePoint 2010.   Much of the same material (i.e. virtually identical) can be downloaded here.
• Create your own SharePoint Server 2010 RTM Virtual Machine – Andrew Connell’s announces that a free guide to create a SharePoint 2010 VM is available form his company, Critical Path Training (Andrew, if you reading this, no promo link for the firm until the cheque arrives).

Events

• No new events, just a reminder about Barcamp Belfast – the postponed Barcamp is now rescheduled for 22nd May.

Careers

• Seagate (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Software Engineer with both Java and .NET experience, based in their Derry plant.
• Relay - .NET developers and Junior Developers required for their Belfast office.
• Gem – Technical Support Agents and Web Application Developer (via NIJobFinder.co.uk)  are required for the Belfast company.
• Fujitsu – A number of software developer roles are currently being advertised for my previous employer.  Roles are in both the Belfast and Derry offices.
• Randox Laboratories (via NIJobFinder.co.uk) – Software Engineer required for the Crumlin plant.
• Openwave – Software and Quality Engineers in the Belfast office.
• Parity – My current company is continuing to recruit for their Centre of Excellence in Belfast.

The Weekly Links 4

This is the 4th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.  As I was working in London last week, this is a bumper post incorporating two weeks worth of links. 

Tools

• TFS 2010 Power Tools – Buck Hodges of the VSTS team announces the release of the TFS 2010 Power Tools.
• FlairBuilder Desktop – My colleague Andy Poots blogs about this handy wireframing tool.
• Ook! .Net Compiler – another esoteric language to add to the ranks of BrainF*@k and LOLCODE.  I learned about the Ook! language by following the Irish Open Spaces Coding Day II on Twitter which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend… But Andrea tells me it is likely to be repeated again in August/September.

Information

• Extension Methods Are Helper Methods That Taste Like Candy – John Sonmez looks at how to make use of C# extension methods.
• C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend... – In a related article, James Michael Hare discusses when you should write an extension method.
• Breaking through the class sealing - Jason Crease gives the lowdown on using the sealed keyword in .NET.
• Back to the basics: constants vs read-only fields – A review of the differences between constants and read-only fields in the .NET framework.
• 6 important .NET concepts: - Stack, heap, Value types, reference types, boxing and Unboxing – A handy reference article on the Code Project site that describes these essential topics.
• Dynamically Read, Compile, and Run Source Code From a Text File – Does what it says on the tin… Interesting article, but I prefer using CSI, a simple C# interpreter written by David Anson, a Microsoft developer.
• 15+ hours of free Visual Studio 2010 – Free online training from Microsoft and AppDev.

SharePoint Related

• An Expected Error Has Occurred – Todd Carter describes how to create custom error pages in SharePoint 2010.
• SharePoint Visio Stencil and Template – Maxime Bombardier on her MSDN blog makes available a Visio template for the easy design of WSPs and features.
• Temporarily disabling List View Threshold on a large list – This article from the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog discusses how to view large lists (> 5000 unfiltered items) in SharePoint 2010.
• How to: Build a SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Cmdlet – Corey Roth takes you through how to create your first PowerShell cmdlet for SharePoint.
• Service Application Framework Architecture – An overview of this framework in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 (the successor to WSS 3.0).

Events

• DevDays 2010 – Digital Circle and the All Island Software Network are organising a conference for all those developing mobile applications in Ireland, in Belfast (25th May) and Dublin (27th May).
• Azure Self-paced Interactive Learning Course – A free online course from Microsoft, starting on the 10th May.
• Idea Hacking #1 Storytelling – A very different event happening in Derry on 3rd June.
• Barcamp Belfast – the postponed Barcamp is now rescheduled for 22nd May.

Careers

• Barclay Communications – iPhone developer and web developer required for the Belfast office.
• CyberSource – A number of roles (QA and Software Engineers) at various levels are being advertised for this growing company, based in Belfast.
• 8over8 – This Derry based company is continuing to advertise for .Net developers.
• Latens – Software Engineers required for the Belfast office.
• ASG – Software and QA Engineers required for their Belfast office.
• Kainos – Graduate Developers required for the Belfast software company.
• Singularity – Various roles being advertised with the Derry based company.
• Learning Pool – The Derry based company are seeking PHP developers (intermediate and advanced) and technical support agents.

The Weekly Links 3

This is the 3rd post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.

Tools

• SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Robert Bruckner blogs about the latest major release of the SQL Server platform.
• Tekpub MVC 2.0 Starter Site – Rob Connery releases a MVC V2 starter framework on CodePlex.
• Studio Styles – Stylish IDE schemes for the discerning Visual Studio user.
• Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 - Grigori Melnik announces about the latest release of the venerable Enterprise Library.
• Launchy – My personal tool of the week is Launchy, a replacement for the SlickRun, my previous program launcher.

Information

• What's new in T4 in Visual Studio 2010 – A comprehensive breakdown of the improvements in T4 (the Text Template Transformation Toolkit), Microsoft’s code generation tool.  Check out Scott Hanselman’s post on T4 for an introduction to it.
• Cyclomatic Complexity – What Is It and Why Should You Care? – a breakdown of what Cyclomatic Complexity is, and why you should care about it from the Java Metrics site.
• C# TDD Videos – Brett Schuchert releases a series of videos showing how the Shunting Yard Algorithm was implemented in C'# using TDD.
• SharePoint 2010 reaches RTM! – Old news now, but SharePoint 2010 was released last Friday…
• Learn Windows Phone 7 Development in 7 Minutes Each – A series of videos introducing developers to the Windows Phone 7 platform.
• Eliminating Comments: the Road to Clarity – John Sonmez describes how eliminating comments improves your code’s readability.
• Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts Poster – Download a handy PDF of the VS2010 keyboard shortcuts.
• SharePoint 2010 Developer Videos – A series of Channel 9 videos demonstrating the new features available for developers using Visual Studio 2010 to develop solutions for SharePoint 2010.
• Top 25 security issues for developers of web sites – exactly what it says it is…
• What is SharePoint Out of the Box? – Bill Simser blogs about what SharePoint OOTB means to him, following a recent series of blog posts on the topic.

Events

• SQL Immersion: Dublin 2010 – Advanced SQL training with Paul Randal and Kimberly Tripp in Dublin this June/July.  Via Bob Duffy’s blog.
• Epicenter 2010 - The 2nd Annual Irish Software Show, epicenter 2010, takes place in Trinity College Dublin between Tuesday 8th and Friday 11th June.

Careers

• Aurion Learning – ASP.NET developer required for the educational software ISV based in Belfast.  More details via NIJobFinder.
• Asidua – Software Developers and Graduate Developers, based in Belfast.
• First Derivatives – A number of developer roles are currently being advertised by the Newry based financial software firm.
• Navinet – Various developer roles based in the new Belfast centre of excellence for the American healthcare firm.
• Isaac Agnew – A senior Software Developer required in Belfast.
• CitiGroup (via NIJobFinder) – Several development roles, based in Belfast.
• QUB – Software Engineer (Grid Computing), based in Belfast.
• Moy Park (via NIJobFinder) – Information Assistant, based in Craigavon.
• Parity – A number of roles available with my own company, based in Belfast.

The Weekly Links 2

This is the 2nd post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.  Given the release of Visual Studio 2010 earlier this week, there is a definite VS2010 theme in today’s post.

Update

Just to make aware, it looks likely that the BarCamp Belfast event will be postponed from the 17th to the 22nd of April.  Check the twitter account for the latest news.

Tools

• Visual Studio 2010 Released – Scott Hanselman highlights the new features in the latest Visual Studio release.
• Visual Studio 2010 Web Deployment Projects Beta – Following this week’s release of VS2010, the Visual Web Developer Team Blog announce the release of the latest release of the Web Developments Project
• SPServices – A jQuery library that wraps wraps the SharePoint web services in an AJAX wrapper for use in JavaScript.  Available from CodePlex.
• AllMargins – A VS2010 extension that replaces the excellent add-in Rockscroll for VS2005/2008.
• Ninite – A great website that allows you to build a bulk installer of a number of great (freeware or open source) applications for Windows. [I used the installer generated by the website this week to help pave my new developer machine, and I really recommend it!]
• CodeRush Xpress for C# and VB – The refactoring toolset is now freely available to all Visual Studio 2010 developers.
• PSake 4.0 – An updated version of the PowerShell Build library for .NET 4.0 is announced by James Kovacs.

Information

• Moving to Visual Studio 2010 - A free eBook is made available by Microsoft for developers on how to move to VS2010.
• Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 – A free eBook from Microsoft Press, useful to database developers who are already using SQL Server.  Link courtesy of Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day.
• My History of Visual Studio – Rico Marian gives his personal history of Visual Studio, as he leaves the Developer division in Microsoft.
• Visual Studio: Why is there no 64 bit version? (yet) – Another post from Rico Marian on why there isn’t a 64 bit version of Visual Studio.
• Same Markup: Writing Cross-Browser Code – A blog post form the IE blog on how to write cross-browser compatible HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
• Rethinking the User Interface Paradigm of IDEs – Niall Doherty highlights the Code Bubbles project that could be the future of the developer user interface.
• How to Refactor the Helper Class – John Sonmez blogs on how to go about refactoring a helper class.  The second in a two part series of posts.

Events

• NW-MTUG Lightening Session – Alan Bradley from NW-MTUG calls for local speakers for a planned event later in teh yaer.
• C# 4.0: What's New? – The next NW-MTUG event in Derry/Londonderry is announced for 17th May.
• LIDNUG: .Net Code Protection with SecureTeam – A online event from the LIDNUG on how to protect proprietary software.
• Introduction to Application Development With Silverlight 4 – NIMTUG host Jesse Liberty in Derry on 22nd April.

Careers

• Northgate IS – Various technical positions are currently available from Northgate IS in Belfast.
• Liberty IT – Software Professionals, Database Developers and Associate Software Engineer/Graduates roles in Belfast.
• Kainos - Infrastructure Services Engineer, based in Belfast.
• Acorn IT Solutions (via NIJobFinder)– Software Developer, based in Maghera.
• Allstate – Oracle DBA, based in Belfast.

Links Roundup

This is the first in a series of weekly roundups of links that will be useful to developers.  This is based on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew, but will also include additional links on SharePoint development, and will focus on events for developers in Northern Ireland.

Tools

• QuickUnit – A Visual Studio add-in to design and generate unit test projects within the IDE.
• Mono Tools - Miguel de Icaza of the Mono team announces the release of Mono Tools, an IDE add-in to allow .Net developers to build solutions using the Mono framework directly from Visual Studio.
• ASP Classic Compiler – A CodePlex project that allows developers to package classic ASP pages as executables so they can run within the ASP.Net environment. I think this is insane, but possibly very useful for those working with legacy projects.
• Switch project files between VS2008 and VS2010 – Given the imminent release of Visual Studio 2010, Steve Dunn’s command line tool allows you to open an existing VS2008 project file from VS2010 without converting the project.

Reference/Information

• Windows Programming: The “it works on my machine syndrome” – Patrick Smacchia of NDepend fame writes about issues that catch the unwary .Net developer when developing applications that run on Windows.
• Precision and accuracy of DateTime – Eric Lippert writes a useful post on the precision of the DateTime struct, and how the StopWatch class should be used to measure elapsed time accurately.
• Visual Studio Myth Busters – An extremely cheesy interactive page on MSDN to tell you the benefits of the various versions of Visual Studio.
• Extreme Programming (XP) at a Glance – A handy blog post giving a concise breakdown of what XP is by J.D. Meier.
• Moving to Visual Studio 2010 – An eBook from Microsoft on what to expect when you upgrade to Visual Studio 2010.
• SharePoint 2010 Certification Details – Tobias Zimmergren gives a breakdown of the new Microsoft certification exams for SharePoint 2010.

Events

• BarCamp Belfast – The unconference returns to Belfast on Saturday 17th April.
• Open Coding – The second Irish open spaces coding day is in Dublin on Saturday 24th April.  I am definitely attending, so let me know if you are also going!
• Visual Studio 2010 Launch Events – Martha Rotter gives details of the various launch events for later this month. She also has created a Twitter alias for all Microsoft tech events in Ireland - @MSIrlTechEvents
• Microsoft Office and SharePoint Roadshow for IT Pros – Read details of the venues and dates for the joint release in Ireland.

Careers

• Replify – Software Engineers (various levels), based in Belfast.
• South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust – ICT Officer, based in the Ulster Hospital, Dundonald (via NIJobfinder).
• Randox Laboratories – Software Engineers, based in either Co. Antrim or Co. Donegal.
• Fluent Technology – Support Manager, based in Belfast.
• Lagan – QA Engineer, based in Belfast.

Moving On…

Yesterday was my last day working at Fujitsu Services.  After 3 years working with Fujitsu as a developer, it was time to move on.  Which is why I jumped when Parity Solutions offered me a position as a Senior Support Application Developer (henceforth known as ‘Saddo’).

To the great friends and colleagues that I leave behind in Fujitsu, I hope things work out for you.  Given that Norn Iron is an extremely small place, we will probably end up working together again soon!

For those of you about to leave your current job, check out this checklist from Scott Hanselman.  Those of you who are looking to leave your current job, Parity are currently recruiting for their new Centre of Excellence in Belfast.