[notaio]

So using abstraction is not something a senior does ? It seems to me like the contrary. The more experience I have the more I like to abstract things instead of making them from scratch. But even so it seems a bit heavy of judgement to disqualify me with such strong word over this choice.

[lambda]

There's nothing wrong with abstraction. But you should use the right abstraction for the job. You don't need a huge PHP web framework, tons of dependencies, an entire package manager, sudo access, and so on to have a simple memory game with a high score backend.

Remember, when you're looking for a job, you're not looking to create some build and forget application. You're going to be working as part of a team. Other people need to be able to maintain your code. For a problem that should be able to fit onto a single page, you don't want to have to browse through a 7 megabyte git repo with nearly 10,000 files in it.

An analogy might be if someone's trying to hire you as a carpenter. They ask you to build a cabinet to demonstrate your skill. You go and find a prefab house frame, an entire prefab plumbing system, and so on, and build the skeleton of a house. Within that, you build a reasonably functional cabinet, though it's kind of hard to judge the cabinet among the entire rest of the incomplete house. How do you think that's going to compare to someone who just went and build a cabinet, and spent the time getting it built really nicely, paid attention to the detail work, made sure the door hung true and opened and closed without squeaks?

Here are a few things that I note at a cursory glance; and notice that I haven't even gotten to the logic of the code, because all of these things are red flags that come up before I am even able to read it:

1. Checking in dependencies to Git. That's not how it you do it; dependencies should be handled by a separate package manager, in which you depend on the appropriate versions of packages. You should never check anything other than your own source code into Git.

2. Your commit messages. Commit messages in Git should follow the format of an email describing a patch. The first line should summarize what the commit does; the rest of the commit should contain a description of why you are doing it. See the following for an explanation of what good commit messages should look like. First from the Git source itself:

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/git/git.git/tree/Documentation/Su...

And then a much more in depth guide:

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GitCommitMessages#Informatio...

3. Inappropriate use of frameworks. You included a lot of dependencies that are unnecessary for the problem at hand. Dependencies have real costs; every extra dependency is something that could break, could have a security bug, could be a pain to upgrade in the future. Now, that doesn't mean to never add dependencies; but do so with a certain amount of care.

4. Simple spelling and style errors. Tabs vs. spaces. Inconsistent spacing: "var _createCell = function( color, id ) {" and "if ( el.className.indexOf('turned-over') > -1)" (note: decide whether there are spaces between parens and their contents, and stick to that choice). You spelled "RESTful" as "restFul". Things like this are seen by developers as canaries in the coal mine; if you are sloppy about the very basic stuff like tabs vs. spaces, are you really going to be mindful of other important things? Consistency of style is important for keeping code readable, if you can't even keep consistent in a simple code interview problem, why should anyone think that you'll be able to do it on a day to day basis when under real deadline pressure?

Here's my exercise for you. If you want to get better, and be able to pass future job interviews, condense this down into as small a codebase as you can, with as few dependencies as possible. I think that you should be able to do this in less than 100 lines of your own code, and only the most basic of dependencies like jQuery and some simple microframework on the server side.

Give that a shot, and then take a look at both for comparison. Which would you rather maintain? Which will be easier to make changes to? Which is easier to code review?

[Sgoettschkes]

Regarding 1. As far as I know, npm says in it's docs you should add node_modules to your scm because there is no way to install the exact same version through npm on different machines. On the other hand, composer has a .lock file which specifies commit hashes it installed on the dev machine, so a composer install installs the exact same commit on every machine.

@OP: You didn't commit the composer.lock. That means that your code might run locally but breaks on another machine because there might be a new version of laravel 4.2

[notduncansmith]

Can you provide a link to that? That's not how npm works at all. You specify dependencies as a dictionary: keys are package names, and values are versions. They support commit hashes, but do not require them. See: https://www.npmjs.org/doc/package.json.html#dependencies

[notaio]

https://www.npmjs.org/doc/faq.html#Should-I-check-my-node_mo...

[arnorhs]

(this is probably not going to be a very popular answer here, since most people enjoy making things abstract, and feel like they're creating value)

Making things too abstract, too early, is usually a bad sign. In most cases, the most most specific and straight forward solution to a problem is the best one.

There's definitely cases where you're simplifying things by making them more abstract and reusable (but making something reusable before you need to reuse it is a waste of time) -- another good case is where you're using the principle of separation of concerns.

I think when I started developing I made everything very abstract, b/c all the books you read would also tell you that was a good thing.

It's not. Until you need to, at least.

[dhotson]

Yep, it's that balance between abstraction and indirection.

Abstraction can be a great tool, but it comes with the cost of added indirection.

You want to aim for the sweet spot in the middle somewhere.

[recursive]

The message you are responding to never mentioned abstraction. You did not address any of the (multiple) issues it did raise.

[wfunction]

A more important principle than "abstract everything away" is "write only what you need". You don't always need abstraction.

[itripn]

Also, please do not confuse abstraction with reuse. "abstracting things" has nothing to do with "making them from scratch". You're definitely conflating two things inappropriately there. I can write reusable code that has absolutely no abstraction in it, and I can write code based on an abstraction that is completely un-re-usable.

[notduncansmith]

Arguably, the conflating of those ideas would speak to his readiness for a senior role.

[zeroxfe]

Abstraction is good. Gratuitous abstraction is bad. Experienced engineers can make that distinction.