People use Stack Overflow to learn how to code? How? I use SO to learn how to do very specific things if I can't figure it out myself, but to learn how to code?
Developer Skills Report
141–150 of 198 posts
Re: Developer Skills Report
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never understood the point of HackerRank. I even got into it with fairly high-up executives at my last job for refusing to fall in-line and use it as a tool. As far as I'm concerned all it does is exacerbate the already terrible hiring practices and hiring biases that plague the software industry. I'm now CTO of a company operating a space that's as challenging as it is esoteric. We make hardware for adding by…
Vivek (founder/ceo of hackerrank) here. Appreciate your comments. When we started HackerRank, it was oriented towards problem solving / algorithmic challenges which assess a certain level of computational thinking skill -- can you break large problems into sub-problems and solve? I still believe this is a good measure but somehow algorithm challenges have been associated with asking complex red-black trees / graph th…
Humble suggestion: add more front end-specific challenges. I do a lot of front end work. I cannot begin to tell you how irritating (infuriating?) it is to have a company express interest, send over a HackerRank test, and then you find out that they picked a bunch of algo questions that have nothing to do with building a UI.
This happens more often than you'd think.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#143> Coding helps enrich your computational thinking, which is powerful in making decisions.
That is backwards. Computational thinking is fundamental to learning to code, and also aids in many other aspects of both learning and performing in any path you may choose. Learning the fundamentals of computational thought is the core skill that everyone will need in the future.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#144People use Stack Overflow to learn how to code? How? I use SO to learn how to do very specific things if I can't figure it out myself, but to learn how to code?
Lot of new questions are about basic stuff explained in the official documentations. I answered a bunch of questions yesterday about React and Babel setups: I just had to pick the answers in the first pages of the docs.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#145> The biggest gap in knowledge is with JavaScript frameworks > Most often, employers want developers who know AngularJS, Node.js, and React. Am I overthinking this? When I've been looking for jobs, I've found the emphasis on JavaScript frameworks slightly perplexing and frustrating. I would assume that a competent web developer should be capable of quickly learning a framework. Having to know JavaScript, CSS, etc. to…
> I would assume that a competent web developer should be capable of quickly learning a framework.
I agree. And I got hired by a company who agrees, and who let me learn on the job. Not all hiring processes are as broken as one might believe solely by reading posts and discussions online. But it does take some effort to put out enough feelers to find those companies, because there are also a plethora of folks who hire for skill sets, not skill.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, they don't want to have to pay you to do the learning. It's usually not "how to get a simple task done with React" – many engineers can get there very quickly – but rather having an understanding of best-practices in terms of architecting your application. Angular, well, can take a while to learn how to use properly.
> It's usually not "how to get a simple task done with React" – many engineers can get there very quickly – but rather having an understanding of best-practices in terms of architecting your application. Perhaps I'm being too pedantic here, but the UI library used has very little to do with how you architect an application. Knowing how to write half decent sql or not reinvent your own message queue is far more import…
Ah, I had somehow assumed that these were predominantly frontend roles.
In that case, I certainly agree the emphasis on one part of the stack feels odd.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#147What's missing on the "core competency" is communication. Honestly, communication and ability to turn a communicated idea into code is more important than problem solving ability. If someone is solving the wrong problems, they're not creating value. Whereas if someone is stuck on a problem, we can fix that by talking about it - as long as the discussed solution can be turned into code.
Communication is such a nuanced thing. In our core senior group there is one guy who refuses to let us talk about anything remotely resembling an implementation-related detail if we're early in the high-level design stage, and it honestly shuts conversation down. I get his point, however at the same time a group of good engineers should be able to briefly and abstractly discuss the potential downfalls of a design decision while considering an implementation detail (say, using columnar storage to address some high-level requirement).
Then, there's folks who communicate "well" in standups, meetings, design discussions, are cogenial, etc. At the same time they might be drowning in some technical debt they've taken on and no one understands it until they're 2 weeks overdue on a deliverable.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#148> Irrespective of your job, it will become important for everyone to learn how to code
It strikes me that the person who wrote that is used to associating with technical people, and might spend a little more time in the real world. I work in a company of 100 ish people, 15 are delivery drivers. 40 odd are sales assistants that customers value for their detailed product knowledge. 4 are involved in cleaning of different kinds. None of those people will ever learn to code, or need to learn to code, or frankly be capable of learning to code
Re: Developer Skills Report
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.skytopia.com/project/fractal/2mandelbulb.html This is the closest reference I could google. The article I am talking about had the author explain the various steps he went through, starting with rotating a 2d fractal, and move up the process to finally get the math equations to generate a truly 3d fractal.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=3d%20fractal -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=935241 (Nov 2009) But unless you read HN for 5+ years without creating an account, the exact discussion you recall may be some other search result there. >mrob: the Wikipedia page is a better starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbulb PS. Algolia seems a bit finicky, a couple of these were on the second page of results fo…
Oh yeah. I lurked a lot. But that is not the site. The site was by a developer complete with code extracts.
Re: Developer Skills Report
#150> Irrespective of your job, it will become important for everyone to learn how to code It strikes me that the person who wrote that is used to associating with technical people, and might spend a little more time in the real world. I work in a company of 100 ish people, 15 are delivery drivers. 40 odd are sales assistants that customers value for their detailed product knowledge. 4 are involved in cleaning of differe…
Completely agreed. Whoever wrote that should find a hobby or profession where being biased and living in a bubble doesn't cause others to be misinformed.