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The Imposter's Handbook

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Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#51

Post by [deleted] »

datguacdoh wrote: post #28
anexprogrammer wrote: post #18

The main thing people miss out on not having a degree is not getting past silly HR "must have degree" filtration. Never once found a CS degree a worthwhile indicator of ability. It may be a superb book, but not even giving a sample chapter out to judge writing style, quality of explanations, depth and so on?

I've interviewed somewhere around 200 people at this point and from my perspective, the degree, university or GPA have had no correlation with how well the candidate does. Now, I interview for Ops roles and not software engineering, so this might not apply across the board for other roles, but I have my doubts.

[deleted]

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#52

Post by jredwards »

teekert wrote: post #20
eksemplar wrote: post #13

I have a degree in CS and I've never found myself in a situation where anyone would discuss bouble sort vs merge sort. Neither have I been in a situation where big-o was relevant beyond the basic concept of not doing obviously stupid shit. What you've really missed is things like best practices, design patterns and concepts like SOLID, but a lot of people with CS degrees missed some of those as well. If the book cove…

I have no degree in CS and I see these terms (Big O, np vs p, etc) regularly, mostly here on HN. No idea what they mean, this books sounds great to me.

I have no degree in CS and I see these terms regularly.

So I google them and read about them.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#53

Post by kevhito »

kchoudhu wrote: post #46
marcosdumay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither have I been in a situation where big-o was relevant beyond the basic concept of not doing obviously stupid shit. How do you know you are doing stupid shit if you don't know about complexity and don't know your algorithms? Really, I do work on CRUD applications from time to time, and I often have to select algorithms based on complexity. Yeah, didn't have to implement one of them for ages¹, but I do have to…

I have libraries that make sure I don't do stupid shit.

And my students have calculators so there is no need for them to know basic arithmetic.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#54

Post by 6DM »

sotojuan wrote: post #30
6DM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even funnier, coming across companies that don't accept anyone who doesn't have a degree from xyz university.

That's the case for some elite finance institutions, but does it happen with programming?

I can't remember specifically, but my area is really huge on government contracting so I doubt it was a finance institution.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#55

Post by ThePawnBreak »

kchoudhu wrote: post #46
marcosdumay wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Neither have I been in a situation where big-o was relevant beyond the basic concept of not doing obviously stupid shit. How do you know you are doing stupid shit if you don't know about complexity and don't know your algorithms? Really, I do work on CRUD applications from time to time, and I often have to select algorithms based on complexity. Yeah, didn't have to implement one of them for ages¹, but I do have to…

I have libraries that make sure I don't do stupid shit.

That's the point, there is no magic library that can do this for you. For example, let's say you're writing Python and have a list of receipt numbers. When you get a new receipt, you want to check if it's already in the list, so you do the pythonic thing: "if receipt_nr in receipts", assuming that the standard implementation of this operation in the library is efficient. The problem is, a set would be a lot more efficient here, but the standard library doesn't know you'll be checking if a number is in the list many times, so it cannot use the appropriate data structure.

So, in a way, the time and space complexity of each operation is part of the interface: maybe you don't really need to know how the internals are implemented, but at the very least you need to know the time and space complexity of the data structures you're using, and how to analyse the complexity of your code.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#56

Post by kabdib »

eksemplar wrote: post #13

I have a degree in CS and I've never found myself in a situation where anyone would discuss bouble sort vs merge sort. Neither have I been in a situation where big-o was relevant beyond the basic concept of not doing obviously stupid shit. What you've really missed is things like best practices, design patterns and concepts like SOLID, but a lot of people with CS degrees missed some of those as well. If the book cove…

These things come up regularly. Well, bubble sort is usually the punch-line to a geeky joke. But I've spent an unreasonable amount of time on data structures that fell apart at scale because of O(N) issues.

Had to look up SOLID. Makes sense, follows the principles I've soaked up from books and a couple O-O courses. That acronym was apparently invented 20 years after I dropped out of college :-)

Just keep learning. No drama. Just improve.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#57

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

eksemplar wrote: post #13

I have a degree in CS and I've never found myself in a situation where anyone would discuss bouble sort vs merge sort. Neither have I been in a situation where big-o was relevant beyond the basic concept of not doing obviously stupid shit. What you've really missed is things like best practices, design patterns and concepts like SOLID, but a lot of people with CS degrees missed some of those as well. If the book cove…

The problem with design patterns and SOLID is that they're sometimes followed in a cargo-cult like manner. You don't necessarily get good code just following a set of instructions. You have to apply common sense, and know the tradeoffs of various approaches. Experience is the most important think to have, and it's something I lack, admittedly.

CS is no substitute for that, but it's still an important part of getting it. It gives you a set of tools and a lexicon for understanding what's going on, and understanding some kinds of tradeoffs. As somebody who is just trying to figure all this stuff out, this is invaluable.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#58

Post by fitzwatermellow »

As an alternative, I would recommend something like Michael Kerrisk's The Linux Programming Interface in lieu of a survey of foundational CS. Gaining a deep understanding of memory, files, processes, threads, signals, sockets, etc. As well as strong Emacs-Fu and bash scripting ability. These are the first steps on the path to mastery ;)

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#59

Post by enraged_camel »

continuational wrote: post #43
anexprogrammer wrote: post #18

The main thing people miss out on not having a degree is not getting past silly HR "must have degree" filtration. Never once found a CS degree a worthwhile indicator of ability. It may be a superb book, but not even giving a sample chapter out to judge writing style, quality of explanations, depth and so on?

Comments like these can only really have two causes: - You've bought into the anti-intellectualism wave that's going on in the US. - The universities near you are really poor. Is it really the case that you learn so little on these universities that you literally have no advantage over those who didn't attend?

There are genuine questions surrounding how valuable CS degrees are (or should try to be) for professional software development careers. It has nothing to do with anti-intellectualism.

Re: The Imposter's Handbook

#60

Post by galdosdi »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #18

The main thing people miss out on not having a degree is not getting past silly HR "must have degree" filtration. Never once found a CS degree a worthwhile indicator of ability. It may be a superb book, but not even giving a sample chapter out to judge writing style, quality of explanations, depth and so on?

It may even be useful to lack a degree, since the job market is otherwise good and you automatically filter out the lamest companies that way ;-)

(No, not a perfect heuristic, but I think it may not hurt)

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