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Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

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Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#131

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

Arro wrote: post #78
bfe wrote: post #40

As someone born and raised in Michigan and whose partner was also born and raised in Michigan, my advice is that other than visiting grandparents and hiking and touring breweries, you will find your opportunities tremendously expanded by as quickly as possible getting the fuck out of Michigan.

Another Michigan ex-pat here to completely agree. Grew up in mid-Michigan, went to a big university there for CS, and I wasn't interested in writing .NET or Java for an insurance company. That led to moving to SF to hack on Python and JavaScript with other hipster hackers. The only thing I really miss is Michigan's summer heat (it's mid 60's and windy here - in July).

Ummm....move to the East Bay. Past the Oakland/Berkeley hills it's between 80 and 100 through the summer, and you can always Bart into SF. Rent is going to be a lot less too.

Of course it will never be as HUMID as in Michigan, but...do you really want that?

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#132

Post by pavel_lishin »

mtogo wrote: post #43
pavel_lishin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah yes, it's so easy to move when you can't afford $100 to start a company. Great advice. My biggest pet peeve about HN? The automatic assumption that if you're not looking to start your own company, you're a worthless idiot. As bretthoerner pointed out, many companies will pay for you to move. And even if they don't, putting $5k on a credit card to move to someplace where you would actually be employed is still a…

My biggest pet peeve about HN? The automatic assumption that if you're not looking to start your own company, you're a worthless idiot. Woah, didn't mean to imply that at all. I just used the "to start a company" bit because he had said that in his post. I notice that attitude around HN and i hate it too. As bretthoerner pointed out, many companies will pay for you to move. And even if they don't, putting $5k on a cr…

I'm sorry, I didn't meant to snap at you.

And I imagine that putting $100 towards a startup and $5k towards a move to a guaranteed job are vastly different - startups can, and often do, fail. A job offer is much more steady - and if he has a family, stability is important.

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#133

Post by codeslush »

If you're able and/or willing to go to Silicon Valley, which is where I think your best bet is (note: I don't live there, but if I was near homeless that's probably where I would go), then I will figure out a way to get you a plane ticket with few strings attached. The strings would be around timing and departure location: I need enough time to get a decent fare. I would expect you to have a plan. I would ask that you fly out of a major airport for competitive fares. That's pretty much it. My email in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#134

Post by eb4890 »

Natsu wrote: post #125
justin_vanw wrote: post #75

Your description really isn't enough to give you advice. You should post your resume online somewhere and link to it. But, based on what you said, I can tell you: Using Python in school and at a job doesn't make you a Python Hacker. From your description of yourself it sounds like you mostly play with programming. It may just be the way you worded it, but what was the last 'major' software project you have worked on,…

I looked at that challenge. Is it really that much harder than FizzBuzz? Seems like it requires more string manipulation and about the same level of mathematics as FizzBuzz. Or am I falling victim to the effect where everything I know how to do looks easy?

I've had a go. It is hard because they don't define what a letter is (a-z, alphanumeric, non-whitespace). I tried with A-Za-z and got the correct answers for the test, but the incorrect answer for the website. Due to the way that the problem works that isn't too unlikely as all the letter function has to do is give the same answers on things like even-ness and whether it has a common factor with another number, things that aren't unlikely given the small amount of test data given.

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#136

Post by dabent »

justin_vanw wrote: post #75

Your description really isn't enough to give you advice. You should post your resume online somewhere and link to it. But, based on what you said, I can tell you: Using Python in school and at a job doesn't make you a Python Hacker. From your description of yourself it sounds like you mostly play with programming. It may just be the way you worded it, but what was the last 'major' software project you have worked on,…

Is there a certain language you'd like to see the code challenge completed in?

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#137

Post by codeslush »

Natsu wrote: post #125
justin_vanw wrote: post #75

Your description really isn't enough to give you advice. You should post your resume online somewhere and link to it. But, based on what you said, I can tell you: Using Python in school and at a job doesn't make you a Python Hacker. From your description of yourself it sounds like you mostly play with programming. It may just be the way you worded it, but what was the last 'major' software project you have worked on,…

I looked at that challenge. Is it really that much harder than FizzBuzz? Seems like it requires more string manipulation and about the same level of mathematics as FizzBuzz. Or am I falling victim to the effect where everything I know how to do looks easy?

I, too, looked at the challenge and originally had the same thought. However, upon a second reading, it seems that there is a lot of room to misunderstand the requirement, which is almost certainly where the difficulty appears.

For example:

1. "Your task..." is not directly correlated to the outputs requested. 2. Item 3 in the SS ranking isn't clear. Specifically, "besides 1" could mean "besides 1" literally, or "besides 1" - where "1" means "one of the above," or even something else.

I was about to attempt to do it, just for fun, but then decided against it because the challenge itself had too much ambiguity in the requirements. That's very likely intentional - but since I'm not looking for a job, didn't need to waste my time playing "a game!" Maybe the successful answer rests in seeking/understanding the real requirements???

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#138

Post by keypusher »

bfe wrote: post #40

As someone born and raised in Michigan and whose partner was also born and raised in Michigan, my advice is that other than visiting grandparents and hiking and touring breweries, you will find your opportunities tremendously expanded by as quickly as possible getting the fuck out of Michigan.

Definitely this. I live in the Boston area, and there are way, way more job openings for Python programmers right than there are qualified applicants. We3 have been trying to find good candidates in the area for months at my work, and I get a couple emails each week asking if I am interested in interviewing for other Python jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#139

Post by microsage »

Natsu wrote: post #125
justin_vanw wrote: post #75

Your description really isn't enough to give you advice. You should post your resume online somewhere and link to it. But, based on what you said, I can tell you: Using Python in school and at a job doesn't make you a Python Hacker. From your description of yourself it sounds like you mostly play with programming. It may just be the way you worded it, but what was the last 'major' software project you have worked on,…

I looked at that challenge. Is it really that much harder than FizzBuzz? Seems like it requires more string manipulation and about the same level of mathematics as FizzBuzz. Or am I falling victim to the effect where everything I know how to do looks easy?

Unless I'm misreading the question, it's actually a good deal trickier than FizzBuzz - the difficult part isn't computing the "sustainability scores" from the input strings, but in maximizing the combination of product offers across the set of offers and customers. It's actually analogous to a rather well studied combinatorial optimization problem (that I won't call out by name here so as to avoid letting potential job applicants look up the answer too easily) that has a fairly non-obvious pseudo-polynomial time dynamic programming solution. The naive solution is exponential time (and still a bit tricky for a novice). I suspect the intent of the question is to find applicants that give the optimal solution rather than the naive one (and to weed out applicants that can't give any correct solution), but I could be mistaken.

Re: Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions

#140

Post by Estragon »

Natsu wrote: post #125
justin_vanw wrote: post #75

Your description really isn't enough to give you advice. You should post your resume online somewhere and link to it. But, based on what you said, I can tell you: Using Python in school and at a job doesn't make you a Python Hacker. From your description of yourself it sounds like you mostly play with programming. It may just be the way you worded it, but what was the last 'major' software project you have worked on,…

I looked at that challenge. Is it really that much harder than FizzBuzz? Seems like it requires more string manipulation and about the same level of mathematics as FizzBuzz. Or am I falling victim to the effect where everything I know how to do looks easy?

  ...am I falling victim to the effect where everything I
  know how to do looks easy?
You could try it and find out. :-) I ended up using a third-party library which implements an algorithm I hadn't heard of before. (My response to the challenge is below, with the useful hints X'd out.)

  Hi, guys.  This is not a gungho-serious job application, though I have
  been sniffing around machine learning/coding jobs for a long time and
  could be persuaded in the right circumstances.  I saw justin_vanw
  mention your Code Challenge on HN and decided to give it a go for fun.
  Didn't realize when I started that the upload mechanism at Code Eval
  assumes a single file, so I am mailing it to you for evaluation,
  instead.  I must admit, I don't have much formal algorithms training,
  but after about an hour's thought I just googled "XXX," and the XXX
  algorithm happened to be the top of the list.  I have a PhD in Applied
  Mathematics from MIT, and I have been focusing on Bayesian Data
  Analysis in Computational Biology, so maybe it was just a lucky
  search-engine hit.  But in general, I am a reasonably quick study.  My
  solution is at , and is tested on python 2.6.5 with scipy
  0.7.0.  Untar the download, go into the XXX directory, run "sudo make
  pyinstall" (I had to add -fPIC to Makefile's CFLAGS assignment to make
  this work), and then the solution program is in
  milo-challenge/solution.py:
  
    met% python solution.py  /dev/null
    XXX
    XXX
  
  BTW, XXX is a C implementation of the XXX algorithm from ,
  and is the reason I couldn't easily go through the Code Eval framework.
  It sends some garbage to stderr, which I haven't bothered to clean up.
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