Internet related News · 2016-03-02

The ‘bar.foo’ Website highlights success stories from Google’s software engineers

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Have you ever wondered how some of Google’s fabled products, like YouTube or Gmail were born, who were the people involved, & what their thought processes might have been?  This Site called ‘bar.foo’ does a fair job of clearing up some of these doubts, & it also seems to act as a gateway for curious young computer scientists that want to pursue a career with the giant software firm.

The bar.foo Site, named for the traditional programming nonsense name variables foo & bar, is an interesting little project that was apparently put together by Google’s recruiters to attract gifted programmers who are up to the task of following the thinking of some of the world’s smartest & most gifted professionals when they set their minds to solving challenging problems.

It’s well known that part of Google’s interview process involves solving challenging programming problems, & until recently Google had a “secret” foo.bar process in place to recruit aspiring employees based on what they searched for on-line. Specific searches related to coding & software development, usually related to Python & Java, triggered the process, asking the searcher: “You’re speaking our language. Up for a challenge?”  If the person follows through, he is then given a series of 5 or more programming problems, which if he satisfactorily answers to all of them, winds up getting an offer for a more traditional recruitment & interview process in Google’s offices in California.

The current bar.foo site, on the surface, is just a place to peruse interesting stories about some of Google’s storied product development gurus’ thought processes, but given what we’ve just mentioned about its namesake secret project, one can’t help but wonder if there’s just a little more to it than meets the eye. Regardless of this, I think that it’s well worth taking a look at it for its own sake.

 
Image Credit: bar.foo

 

 

 

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