Ask HN: I've been a programmer for 6 years, and I can't solve basic CS problems

"Hard problems" are risky business ventures. In my career, we've done a couple of things that would be considered "hard", but in each case we've leaned heavily on papers published in academia. The best example might be when the team I was on did shape recognition from hand drawn shapes to shape objects in a drawing application. I've occasionally been asked to solve some hairy caching/concurrency problems, but again I've gone straight to the literature.

My brother worked in a company that was doing circuit board design (simulating crosstalk, etc). Their work was highly theoretical, but they had electrical engineers doing the research (and were actively collaborating with a university). His job was 99% implementing code.

I feel that programming is more about handling complexity than it is about solving other problems. You sometimes dip your toes into solving problems in other domains, but the biggest value you can give as a programmer is in creating a code base that is both simple and sustainable (and keeping it that way). This is the hardest problem I've ever worked on by far. It dwarfs any of the other problems I've tried to solve. I sometimes get a bit depressed that others don't consider it a "hard" (and therefore interesting) problem.

My point wasn’t that they aren’t important, just that the OP didn’t need to feel bad about not learning about them yet. It was meant more to point out that learning the history of how other people solved problems can inform the way we approach new challenges, but that everything was unknown before it was discovered.

> It makes me question how I was hired in the first place.

It is called imposter syndrome. It is very real and very common. As a JavaScript developer I encounter this among my peers all the damn time.

First, consider what it takes to be a professional software developer. The requirement is to pass a one time drug test and successfully answer questions in a 30-90 minute interview. Done.

Consider, conversely, all other white collar professions. They have licensing, certifications, educational requirements, and legal compliance. There is greater oversight and compliance to become a truck driver than a software developer.

The closest uniform indication of competence (if you can call it that) most software developers experience is demonstrating experience with a tool or framework. To me this says you more than new and probably better than negligently incompetent. It doesn't tell me that you are an excellent specimen of solving original problems.

Secondly, I suspect you go to work, achieve your assigned tasks, and then forget about programming until the next day. This is problematic because in most cases there isn't much expected of software developers in the corporate world. Most of us are glorified and over-paid button pushers. Achieving conformance to nearly thoughtless tasks that could be better performed by software is not an indication of professional growth. There are many times I have encountered QAs who seemed far more brilliant at problem solving than the developers they were checking.

This is one reason why more ambitious software developers contribute to open source. Their day jobs are boring with no growth potential, but their software hobby is extremely challenging and solves real problems.

Brilliant comment. Shouldn’t you be building startups yourself instead of trying to fit into these teams? I think your skill set speaks for itself.

Recently I joked with the interviewers over Skype screen sharing that I probably wouldn’t be fast enough to get a pair programming exercise done with 3 of them watching me. And that often these things you either see right away or struggle with. They all laughed and agreed.

I wanted to test a particular function after setting everything up, installing jest etc. But was told not to because deconstructing xpath was an implementation detail. No one could see what was wrong with my working and all three of them said it’s the way of working and not if you happen to get the answer on the day.

Of course they failed me saying I was too weak at programming. I won’t be doing coding over Skype screen sharing again and with more than one person in the room, it’s just too stressful and random.

Programming isn't the same thing as computer science, in the same way that writing isn't the same thing as journalism.

Writing code is the easy part. It's tedious, requires lots of practical knowledge and troubleshooting skills, but is for the most part a straightforward exercise. Computer science is about the theory. It involves solving problems in the abstract, using (and in some cases creating) new conceptual tools with which to think about, model, and solve a problem.

Many jobs in the software industry require only programming skills, and with those you can get along decently at any one of thousands of companies which are basically just building the same kinds of applications over and over again. But doing anything truly interesting requires venturing into the world of computer science, which requires years of study to master.