Headhunter Fail

Recently I was called by a headhunter. I don't mind being contacted by them if they do their research properly and have interesting things to say. But it wasn't the case this time...

The Call
I don't know why these people (headhunters) always need to call. I personally would prefer an email. I will read it when it suits me. But being soft-skilled, they have to talk (i.e. call). Talk if you have to, but please research and find the proper phone number! This poor fool called the company's main number and my boss was the one to pick it up. This was quite an embarrassment.

She (the headhunter) told me about a position I might be interested in. Well, I don't have time to talk, but send me some details, would you. You know my email address? Yes, of course you do, in contrary to my mobile phone number. So what's the point in calling me anyway? Is there a checkbox on your form to make sure the candidate is able to cope with embarrassing phone calls? But I'm repeating myself. Just don't call me.

The E-mail
Finally I had some hard information in my mailbox.

• Who she was.
• Company she was working for. (I had not known it before.)
• Web page of the headhunting company. (I checked it out and it did not impress me at all.)
• and the offer.

The Job Offer
And the offer really made me laugh. Here is a rough translation (Google translate rules ;-):

Our client is a reputable company in the high-tech
industry and international leader in its niche.

Wow! It's a reputable and internationally known company. Who cares, but what's the niche? What is it doing? Is it producing stuff or just selling things? How big is it?

Your tasks:
* Analysis and development of existing systems
* Creation of software applications
* Testing of applications
* Implementation
* Fixing bugs in existing applications

Aha, my task is to develop software. That's expected from an offer for a Java software developer. Not much to see here. I would like to know what kind of applications, how the testing is done etc.

Your profile:
* Some kind of technical education
* Experience in software development in Java
* Experience with XML
* Understanding of development processes
* Dynamic personality
* Fluent in English

So one should have experience in developing software with Java. At least here is some information: The company which is hiring is using Java and XML (somehow). They have some kind of development processes. Or they want to have one. But what kind of process, e.g. waterfall or agile? Or do they just want people to be aware of documentation and testing. Is there any Java developer out from school that would not match this profile?

I'm not interested at all
The offer was poor and boring, I didn't even bother to answer it. But still I'm asking myself how the headhunter-researcher could think that this a position I might be interested in.

UltraEdit and Gforth

Forth
Forth is a computer programming language. Among other things Forth is stack-based, which makes it unique. (Well it's not entirely unique, just quite different from the usual languages like Java or C#.) It's not as popular as other programming systems and most likely you don't know it. I didn't know it either, but the interview with Charles H. Moore, its creator, sparked my interest. So I chose Forth as my new programming language for the last year.

Syntax Highlighting
I use UltraEdit and love it. I created a wordfile for ANS compliant Forth. Adding a wordfile for syntax highlighting is simple. UltraEdit versions 14.20 and earlier use a different approach, but the wordfile is still compatible. As soon as UltraEdit knows about the structure of a Forth program, it's able to provide code completion (shown on the screenshot on the right) and function lists showing all defined functions (see another screenshot).

Limitations

• The wordfile contains only core words. (Adding words is easy, just add them to the proper section of words in the wordfile.)
• // is only a comment, if there is a blank or a newline before it, but the later is not possible to define in wordfiles. So line comments starting in the first column are not highlighted properly.
• UltraEdit supports only symmetric strings, e.g. character sequences between " and ". Forth sequences between S" or C" and " are somehow like strings, but in fact S" and C" are parsing words. These words are highlighted, but not recognised as the beginning of a string. So known words inside strings will be highlighted as well.
• There is no way to define the pattern for matching numbers and UltraEdit uses its internal magic. This causes some minor glitches in number formatting, e.g. with negative numbers.

Tool Integration
Last year I attended the lecture Stackbased Languages and played around with Gforth that was recommended there. There is a good Gforth integration in Emacs, but I want to stick with UltraEdit. Using its tool configuration I defined a menu item together with a keyboard shortcut for invoking Gforth:


Create a new menu item with name gforth, set the command line to gforth "%n%e" -e bye in the working directory %p and make sure the output is captured. Another tool worth defining is the Gforth ANS Report with command line

C:\gforth\gforth.exe C:\gforth\ans-report.fs "%n%e" -e "print-ans-report bye"

Acknowledgement
Experimenting with Forth was part of several System One Research Days. Thank you System One for your support :-)

(Download the UltraEdit wordfile here.)

For You Scala Enthusiasts

On my way to a Jelly at sector 5 I walked past several streets which I had never seen before and stumbled upon a Scalagasse (Scalaalley or Scalalane):

I didn't know that Martin had already whole streets dedicated to his golden egg :-)

(In fact the alley is named after the Viennese priest Johann Scala (1816–1888), who was a member of the district council.)