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

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

#251

Post by gassiss »

exikyut wrote: post #119
cs0 wrote: post #31

Thank you to everyone who has replied to my rant. I felt of low value for not being able to provide immediate help for most of the problems that she's being taught to work on. Some of the examples (since some of you were asking for them): https://github.com/cs50/docs/blob/master/_pages/2018/x/psets... https://github.com/cs50/docs/blob/master/_pages/2018/x/psets... I realise that I may have written my original post a…

There is very good advice and suggestions here, but IMO this thread is also distinctly "noisy" - lots of discussion and sharing, but very little in the way of a coherent go in this direction! . So, I'd like to offer a couple of things that may be of immediately actionable, relevant assistance: SICP and NAND2Tetris. -- SICP - the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - was designed as an entry-level theory…

There's also a Coursera MOOC on Nand2Tetris:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer

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

#252

Post by Kaotique »

arandr0x wrote: post #244
Kaotique wrote: post #231

My spouse started a bootcamp last year and I've helped her with many algorithm assignments. Even though I have a CS bachelor degree I still struggled with a lot of the algorithms exercises out there. It requires practice and there are actually a lot of subtleties that you don't experience while working on software projects. A lot has to to with mathematics as well. You can work on projects with hundreds of thousands…

I'm curious, is it the norm for people who do online courses or bootcamps to get help from their spouses? Is it not unfair for those students that are unpaired? I was in university (and thus not really in the pairing off mindset) last time I seriously studied a brand new field but I never got a romantic partner or even a friend to help me directly with my assignments, it would have felt like cheating in a way... but…

Are academic students getting help from fellow students, a tutor, a teacher or their parents also cheaters?

Do you consider tennis players with a coach also cheaters? The player still has to play the match by themselves.

Are developers who ask for help from a colleague also cheaters in your eyes?

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

#253

Post by sodafountan »

supercall wrote: post #35
swatcoder wrote: post #10

Think of it this way: application development, software engineering, and computer science (and data science and ... etc) sometimes use the same tools but are all different disciplines. Universities traditionally focused on Computer Science and their graduates would often need a lot of grooming before they could really be independently and reliably productive in the commercial words of application development or softw…

What's the difference between application development and software engineering?

I've worked in both of those environments, where my titles were literally "application developer" and "software engineer". In the former, we did a lot of things without process and worked on a wide variety of applications and in the latter I worked in an Agile environment focusing on a core product.

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

#254

Post by mcv »

peteforde wrote: post #179

Honestly, I'm appalled by some of the stories being shared in this thread; smug interview panels pressure-cooking candidates as they try to whiteboard obscure CS gotchas is a system perfect only for assholes and masochists. I've now run three tech companies and hired dozens of developers by having really intense, thoughtful conversations with them. I asked them to tell me war stories and encouraged them to share insi…

Most companies I talk to do this: we talk, they ask questions, I tell about a couple of projects, I ask questions, they tell about their company.

Some want me to do an assessment, which is fine. But it's at home on my own dev machine, and not on some whiteboard.

I generally like these take-home assessments. The best had me write a game board in React on which you could place obstacles, and an adapted A* algorithm to find the shortest path through it. That was really fun. I'd never done something like that.

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

#255

Post by EADGBE »

supercall wrote: post #35
swatcoder wrote: post #10

Think of it this way: application development, software engineering, and computer science (and data science and ... etc) sometimes use the same tools but are all different disciplines. Universities traditionally focused on Computer Science and their graduates would often need a lot of grooming before they could really be independently and reliably productive in the commercial words of application development or softw…

What's the difference between application development and software engineering?

As with most HR departments, it could be a classification required for salary, which also highly depends on work experience and not necessarily school background.

- Someone who's job title is much fancier than otherwise necessary

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

#256

Post by joshuamorton »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
craftyguy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're sharing anecdata, I'm a professional developer and still use recursion, building/traversing various types of tree data structures, and a few other CS degree requirements. That said, for algorithms (e.g. sorts, etc), understanding what the options are and trade-offs is certainly more useful than knowing how to implement them, since there's a good chance someone has implemented it already in your language o…

What percentage of developers do you think are solving “hard problems” compared to ones that are just doing CRUD apps or yet another SAAS app?

The big secret is that everything is a CRUD app. It doesn't mean that the C, R, or U steps can't involve hard problems.

I had to implement a quadtree from the ground up, because existing solutions didn't work, when working as an SAP consultant on some dashboarding tool (I also had to know what a quadtree was!)

I now work in a generic unsexy role doing release engineering. About half my job is generic software engineering, but the other half is comparatively academic. I was reading academic papers on Aho-Corasick derivatives last week and writing statistical tests in jupyter notebooks this week.

And my interview questions are generally inspired by problems I've had in my work, just normally somewhat simplified since the way I phrase them justifies the need for a specific class of solution much more clearly than whatever nonsense I encountered in the first place.

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

#257

Post by arandr0x »

Kaotique wrote: post #252
arandr0x wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, is it the norm for people who do online courses or bootcamps to get help from their spouses? Is it not unfair for those students that are unpaired? I was in university (and thus not really in the pairing off mindset) last time I seriously studied a brand new field but I never got a romantic partner or even a friend to help me directly with my assignments, it would have felt like cheating in a way... but…

Are academic students getting help from fellow students, a tutor, a teacher or their parents also cheaters? Do you consider tennis players with a coach also cheaters? The player still has to play the match by themselves. Are developers who ask for help from a colleague also cheaters in your eyes?

No, definitely not (at least on the latter two; my school did say take home assignments had to be done independently, if graded. People did get help on the ungraded assignments, though I didn't).

I wondered if bootcamps/online were more like in the adult world (where it's basically always OK to get help) or like traditional degrees (where everything graded has to be done on your own unless a team project). You are saying it is more the former, I suppose.

I just wanted to know if everyone did it. Like are most people in bootcamps friends or spouses or children of working programmers? or are there also people doing this "out of nowhere" like at community college?

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

#258

Post by cestith »

austincheney wrote: post #223
pmiller2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t trying to imply that’s the case. I’d love to move out of the Bay Area, just to get away from the whole “leetcode or GTFO” interview style, but the fact that there are so many opportunities around here keeps me here for the moment. Well, that and I can actually make enough money to pay my student loans while living somewhat comfortably and saving a little money. If I knew anyplace that had decent weather where…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plano,_Texas#Economy That is just Plano. There are arguably more opportunities around each of North Dallas and Addison. The cost of living here is a third of the bay area and that isn't including the size of house. This is why California is bleeding 60k people a year to north Texas.

Houston, Austin, and San Antonio have quite a few jobs and decent cost of living, too.

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

#260

Post by Aeolun »

scarface74 wrote: post #76
aphextron wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that's okay! Inventing new algorithms with theoretical significance is not your job! You have other skills and they're of much more immediate value! Except when it comes to getting a job. Forget any of the rest of your skills, because we all know the only thing that matters when interviewing is an ability to recite CS algorithms out of memory and solve obtuse puzzles while pretending you've never seen them.

Except when it comes to getting a job. Forget any of the rest of your skills, because we all know the only thing that matters when interviewing is an ability to recite CS algorithms out of memory and solve obtuse puzzles while pretending you've never seen them. I’ve been a professional developer for 20 years and have never had to recite CS algorithms or solve obtuse problems. My last three jobs I had to whiteboard an…

If it helps any, I’ve been one for 10, and I hadn’t seen any problem like it until I started applying to startups.

The crap I was asked was pretty insane to be honest.

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