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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

#301

Post by wrkta »

hmmk wrote: post #44
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…

What exactly did you have trouble with? These really are simple problems, all you need are an understanding of loops, ASCII character codes, and basic arithmetic. To be honest, I'm surprised a seasoned developer of 5+ years can't do these, or at least have a decent stab at them.

You don't even need to understand ASCII. You can hard code an array of all the letters in the alphabet, search for a given letter and replace it with the letter 13 places ahead in the array. If you were really lazy and didn't want to worry about the logic for rolling over when going past Z, you could even rewrite the first 13 letters at the end.

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

#302

Post by ejanus »

int_19h wrote: post #141
diminoten wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a self-taught programmer who doesn't have a CS degree, my experience is substantially different. There are many places where I would seriously consider applying (FAANG) that this would be a significant hurdle. I've taken to competitive programming as a way to prepare myself, but I'm a long way away from being at a level where I'm comfortable applying to the companies I'd like to work for. I think a lot of people l…

I am self-taught, no degree whatsoever. I didn't have a problem landing a job at Microsoft regardless, with a few years of mostly C++ experience under my belt. Wouldn't even say it was hard. And no-one at work had asked me if I have a degree, ever since that first interview. Now, that's not FAANG, technically speaking (although FAANG was always about stocks, not job culture). But for what it's worth, I've had recruit…

I need to tap your brains. Contact please

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

#303

Post by ejanus »

codemusings wrote: post #182
hmmk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did you have trouble with? These really are simple problems, all you need are an understanding of loops, ASCII character codes, and basic arithmetic. To be honest, I'm surprised a seasoned developer of 5+ years can't do these, or at least have a decent stab at them.

I mean the question also is whether OP has done any programming in C before. If the majority of your expierience is in VB.NET and web technologies I can see this being a major hurdle aside from the actual algorithmic problem.

I don't think C is the issue here but mental shift . I have suffered from same situation in the past. He should just spend time and interpret the question, internalize it , and then code it

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

#304

Post by protonimitate »

aphextron wrote: post #52
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…

>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.

> 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

This attitude only seems to exist in companies that are seen as 'top n'. Want to stop interview in this manner? Stop applying to these companies.

Unfortunately if you want to get the paycheck that comes from these types of companies, you have to play their games. You can't complain the interview system is broken and then only apply to jobs that offer 150k total comp and have brand name recognition.

For every FAANG with a broken interview system, there are 5 other decent companies with intelligent people that don't do this crap.

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

#305

Post by cloverich »

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…

From my perspective on interviewing and talking to lots of dev's, I take at least some of the horror stories with a grain of salt. I've seen some "pressure cooker" scenarios really just be interviewers who were not very good at interviewing. Conversely, I've gone deep in conversations with a developer on how BS interview questions are, and while imaging some crazy graph algorithm or something they come out with "Yeah they tried to get me to implement a Set" (at a high level, in Javascript). That's not a challenging or obscure problem, this person simply lacked technical depth and was jumping on the bandwagon.

Which is all to say, I can agree in general with obtuse CS problems being a bad proxy. But I think asking someone you are hiring to write code all day to write code as part of the interview is reasonable, and at this point I'd be suspect if I were interviewing somewhere and they _didn't_ ask me to write at least _something_.

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

#307

Post by Neist »

hmmk wrote: post #245
Neist wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sure make it sound more complicated than it really is... I'm a self taught developer too, so I get where you're coming from :-) In javascript I would solve it like so: "HELLO".replace(/./g, character => String.fromCharCode(character.charCodeAt() + 1)) This would result in "IFMMP". Basically it's just a matter of shifting charcodes.

Your solution would not work for all cases. For example, shifting "JAZZ" up by 1 should result in "KBAA" but your program would output "KB[[". You also need to handle wraparound at the ends of the alphabet.

Hi! Yeah, you're right! This was a 1-minute quick'n'dirty solution :-)

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

#309

Post by adetrest »

cloverich wrote: post #305
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…

From my perspective on interviewing and talking to lots of dev's, I take at least some of the horror stories with a grain of salt. I've seen some "pressure cooker" scenarios really just be interviewers who were not very good at interviewing. Conversely, I've gone deep in conversations with a developer on how BS interview questions are, and while imaging some crazy graph algorithm or something they come out with "Yeah…

What's the point of reimplementing a set though? It already comes with the language, and the language's implementation is probably miles better than what you'd come up with anyway.

I'd be more interested to know whether the candidate knows what a set is, and how it differs from an array or an object, and when might it come handy. But reimplementing what already comes with the language? A waste of time, and (hopefully) not representative of the work they'll be doing day to day.

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