I completely agree. I'm also convinced that 99% of the time, the interviewer has no idea what to do with the information given by the applicant anyway.

I refuse to ask stupid puzzle questions when I interview people, and I never accept jobs at companies who do. I'm much more interested in the applicant's ability to write good code and architect a solution to a real-world problem. Having them parrot back code to produce the Fibonacci sequence is utterly irrelevant to either of those goals.

Another interview question I think shows the ineptitude of the interviewer is, "What is your greatest weakness?" What the hell are they looking for? A personal confession? "Well, I do have a penchant for sexual harassment and committing adultery with all the senior executive's wives, but if you hire me, I'll try to keep it under control."

Then why beat around the damn bush? Why not just say what you're looking for and have an honest discussion about it with somebody? I hate interviews where I feel like I'm being tricked into answering some hidden question.

I don't believe PHP is fine at all. It encourages poor development practices by making it much easier to combine database calls, business logic, and presentation all in the same file than it is to code things right. It also becomes unweildy with even modest-sized websites, in my opinion. ASP.NET, though more manageable, also encourages poor coding practices with the VB-esque features for ASP.NET in Visual Studio by mixing logic and presentation into the same file (unless it has gotten drastically better during the last five years since I last used it). I also don't particularly like the way ASP.NET deals with HTTP headers and sessions, though it has been so long I can't really remember what it was I found repulsive.

I would recommend one of the many ORM-based MVC frameworks available, e.g. Ruby on Rails (Ruby), Django (Python), Play! (Java/Scala), etc. These types of frameworks encourage good coding practices by keeping your business logic and HTML code separated, as they should be. It is also a lot easier to use an ORM rather than trying to hand code a bunch of SQL statements yourself. Of these three examples I mentioned above, my preference is Django because I think Python is a more clear, productive, and expressive language than the other two, but there are many frameworks to choose from, so you can work in a language that you like.

If you really like PHP, CakePHP is a MVC option, but in my only experimentation with it, I found it too inflexible. It may have improved since then though. I don't know.

I completely agree! The only thing I recall learning from a Deitel & Deitel book was a deep appreciation for authors who could quickly get to the point.

That is quite possibly the most incoherent rant I have ever read. I'm not really sure what type of development the author is talking about as he backflips from Python to kernels, and PostgreSQL to schedulers, but I simply couldn't find a hint of sense from beginning to end. I think he got a bit heavy into the Tequila he mentioned, passed out, and his Rhesus Monkey banged out the article through hyperactive dung flinging. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

The main difference between a republic and a democracy is this:

A democracy is a form of government where unlimited and absolute power belongs to The Majority (or in other words, as I described it earlier, democracy is mob rule). In a democracy, minorities have no protection against the unlimited power of The Majority. This is true of both direct democracies and representative democracies. The inevitable outcome of a democracy is tyranny at the hand of The Majority.

On the contrary, a republic is a system of government that seeks to control The Majority strictly in order to protect the rights of the individual. It prescribes a constitutionally limited and representational government, whereas a democracy does not.

I know to some, the terms "republic" and "democracy" seem synonymous, but they are not. I believe that particular muddying of the waters has been intentional over the years.

The real core and defining difference between these two forms of government is the formation of a ratified constitution through a constitutional convention, which limits the power of both the government AND The Majority.

You cannot limit your understanding of varying forms of government to a blurb in a dictionary. There are a lot of books about the history surrounding the formation of the Constitution of The United States of America that will give you a lot of insight into various forms of government, and why the framers of the Constitution did NOT want a democracy. "The Federalist" is probably a good one to start with.

There is a distinct form of government called a democracy. It is basically "mob rules". We certainly are not that, though we have gotten closer as the years between the 18th and 21st century have marched on.

It couldn't be that Utah chose to teach that the U.S. is a republic because it IS. No, it has to be because the word "democracy" looks like the word "democrat." Those wacky conservatives! Always teaching truth for the wrong reasons!

Anybody who uses the terms "right wing," "left wing," "Republicans," or "Democrats," prior to unleashing some political invective instantly loses all credibility with me. Considering the current state of the U.S. government, attributing negative tendencies or blame for our myriad problems on one political stance or party (especially when that attribute is lying) tells me that you are an ideologue who is either blinded by devotion, or simply not paying attention.