Tales from the Interview: A Reusable Application

Jay J had been helping a friend with the job hunt. As an experienced developer, with a strong network, Jay had a sense of who was hiring and what jobs were promising. One of his connections turned up a lead at Initech. Jay pointed his friend in that direction, and wished for the best.

"They won't let me apply," the friend explained when Jay asked how things were going. "Here, try it. These are my details. This is the link for the web application. Fill in the form and see what happens."

The first thing Jay noticed when pulling up the form was that it was clearly built from a toolkit of reusable widgets. The way validations appeared, the way the page laid out- this was a bolt-together HR application built out of some enterprise solution. Nothing inherently wrong with that approach- it can save time by using reusable components.

The trick, of course, is that reusable components have to be used correctly.

Jay filled in the from. Name. Address. Birth date. Attach a resume. Re-enter 90% of the information that's already on the resume. Click submit.

Error: dteBirthDate cannot be a holiday

A date picker with reusable validations is a good idea. Blindly using the validation configuration from someplace else in the system is not.

"Y'know," Jay said, "maybe you don't want to work there anyway."

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