FOSDEM is an annual event for software developers, focused on open source software, happening in Bruxelles during the first weekend of February.
The event this year was the 5th FOSDEM conference I attended, starting from 2010. During the years I have seen it evolve: as the presentation focus moved along with the industry, some topics faded out and got replaced by newer things. Many of these newcomers did not actually gain traction over the years and also faded out at some point.
One of the main transitions I have noticed was the one from abstract or too general things (e.g. discussions on the Linux Kernel or performance tricks in C/C++) towards end products and getting (soon to be) mature technologies applied in order to get clear outcomes.
This is supposed to be a text about following your passion: some people follow on saving the world, others prefer apparently simpler things like popping green pigs. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not about the purpose per se but the way to get there. It’s always about work, a lot of work.
Looking at the screen below, one could easily conclude that – at some point – I did become very, very efficient in the pig popping business. At the end of the day, some of these golden eggs become available when winning 3 stars in maybe 60 different levels.
The long interview day is nearing its end. Googamazbook got the best and the worst out of you (well, neither of those, but I’m trying to put some literature in here); the last interviewer comes in, smiles condescendently and greets you with:
Time for the easy interview, heh?
Yes, you have all the reasons to be concerned and feel you’re just one step away from failure (yes, why didn’t you spend the day by the pool in the basement of the many stars hotel they got you a room in for the interview?). But without further ado, the questions start pouring in:
Question 1
How do you figure out if a process is CPU bound or I/O bound?
Tricky! Let’s not jump to the conclusion. There are 2 variables here, this means we have 4 possibilities: