[xaybey]

As a fun warm up-question, I always ask the candidate what editor and keyboard they use. The candidate who geeks out about their plugins and cherry switches inevitably passes all 5 rounds; the candidate who uses eclipse with maybe a vim plugin will go on to fail about 75% of the time. It's a good filter too; I'd say 1 out of every 20 candidates expresses strong convictions.

I'm seriously considering using it as a dog whistle and skipping the experience deep-dive (which tests if you are a good story teller), the systems design questions (which tests if you can sync to the interviewer's sense of judgement), and the algorithm hazing (which tests social anxiety). But I'm worried there is some kind of discriminatory correlation baked into that metric.

[sbisker]

I worked at a company that tried that for a while and eventually decided to completely abandon it, because it was correlating so strongly to a particular set of experiences shared by the (mostly male, CS degreed) interviewers. Particularly with more junior engineers, where having a sexy setup is more likely to correlate who you hung out with in college than whether you actually coded enough to find a need for it yourself. So if you're going to play with that as a signal, I'd advise you to be very careful.

[twic]

I have exactly the opposite bias. I think people who get really into keyswitches, alternative keyboard layouts, and .vimrcs are prone to getting distracted by unimportant details. Of course, we all want to use the most comfortable and productive tools, but a skilled person will attach more weight to things that have more impact.

Still, i'm glad i know people like that, because it's really easy to get a knowledgeable recommendation when i need a new keyboard!

[edanm]

As someone who totally geeks out about my editor (vim, what else!?), I can understand that.

However, I'm pretty sure that out of the many, many developers I've worked with, including some brilliant ones, I'm one of barely a handful who gives much serious thought to editors. This could also reflect a bias of location - HN'ers are more likely to geek out over editors, but I think in general people in Silicon Valley tend to care more about this, as opposed to people in Israel, where I'm from.

I do sometimes ask similar questions about more technical topics that the candidate should be familiar with, e.g. which DB do you use (backend engineer), which JS framework you use, etc. This is something that the strong candidates must have brushed up against, and should have a strong opinion about.

[poikniok]

Just out of curiosity to see how I do, how would you rate using stock Intellij IDEA and a Macbook? Additionally am interested because some top algorithm competitors (of which I am not one) have this very setup.

[bshimmin]

I often ask people about their editor setup too - I tend to find that the level of enthusiasm they have about their editor is a moderately good indicator of their enthusiasm in general (though not, necessarily, their competence - I think that's stretching it too far). If they give me a look as if to say, "Why on earth is he asking this?" or they reply with something like, "Oh, whatever to get the job done... what do you use?" then it doesn't suggest to me that this is a person who gets much pleasure out of programming.

The other nice thing I find about asking this is that it isn't a question they've prepared for, so you tend to get an honest answer.

[rachelbythebay]

nano and a $10 Logitech k120. What's your verdict?

[mikekchar]

I really wanted to play this game, but after thinking about it, it really depends on why you use nano and the k120. The k120, in particular, is a very stiff keyboard with a mushy feel. It requires a fair amount of strength. I couldn't use it all day -- especially not with nano.

My initial thought was that you are a very careful programmer that tries not to make too many mistakes. I also thought that you probably try to write code in one pass and that you avoid TDD and other techniques that cause you to go back and revisit code again and again.

But, I cheated a bit and noticed in your profile that you have sysadmin experience, so now I wonder if the cheap keyboard is simply the keyboard that happens to be there. Nano is because you can't be bothered to spend your life learning vi and nano is the other editor that's guaranteed to be on whatever machine you happen to be logged in to. So that would make you pragmatic (as any good sysadmin is).

What's kind of interesting about this process for me is that I now have this utterly fictitious view of you based on ridiculous stereotypes. We could probably have a good conversation where you poke a million holes in my view, but without really challenging anything that I hold dear. Not really sure if it's a good idea, but it is definitely interesting to think about.

[WWLink]

Sounds like someone that at least knows how to use a terminal and maybe some linux commandline tools like gdb.

I think the person we're replying to is looking for someone that wrote a few popular VIM/sublime plugins and uses an ergodex they built themselves.

I don't use an ergodox because I wanted an RGB keyboard, and I use sublime with a handful of simple plugins because that's what I like. I used to hate vim, but some of my coworkers love it, so I respect that and have tried to use it more often. :) The good news is the coworkers that live out of vim like sublime, too. They're just used to vim, nothing wrong with that.

It's not a terrible place to start though.

[rfrey]

I'm probably just reading this into your comment, but the challenging tone makes it seem like you think OP is pretty misguided... like there's no information to be had here.

But isn't an interest in tools pretty common in most crafts/trades? If I were hiring a woodworker for my cabinet shop, I'd probably ask about favourite tools. I wouldn't actually care if they talked about how a bandsaw beats a tablesaw every time, or launched into a sermon about shopmade wooden handplanes versus metal monstrosities. It's the presence of an opinion at all that matters.

edit: I don't actually have a cabinet shop. :(

[twic]

Tools, yes. But seeing editors and keyboards as the tools indicates that someone is operating at a pretty low level of abstraction. If you asked a civil engineer what their favourite tool for designing bridges over deep valleys was, and they said "a Rotring isograph" [1] rather than "parabolic arches", would you be impressed?

[1] http://www.cultpens.com/i/q/RT04273/rotring-isograph-technic...

[commentai]

I love the office keyboard. It's so fun!