101–110 of 127 posts
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Yeah right. Tell me the last time you built your own red-black tree in real actual code at work. Or did a sort by any other means than tacking “order by” on the end of a query. They are a test of how recently you crammed for your CS finals, that’s all.
Tell me a better standardized question set for programmers that measures intelligence efficiently.
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> People in their 20s and 30s now will regret not stamping out ageism when they hit their 40s and 50s, as they inevitably will The problem is, everyone in their 20s and 30s assumes they'll be gazillionaires by the time they're 40, because of course they're brilliant and hard work always pays off! Ageism is only a factor if you're not smart enough to make a billion by the time you're facing it.
Hard work does pay off. Believe in karma.
Unfortunately then the victims of ageism now will find that cold comfort in the future.
The most irritating thing with these competitive/algo stuff is that no matter how many times you master it - eventually you always forget it, because you don't need it on a daily (or more like yearly) basis in the real world.
This is the case with anything you didn't discover it yourself but rather 'learned it', that's actually just a replaceable term for 'memorized it'. People who discovered/invented these algorithms traversed several years of curiosity, blind alleys, dead ends, failures and successes. You can't possibly expect to get it all and make it up on memorization alone. Algorithm learning is hard for the same reasons memorizing…
The most irritating thing with these competitive/algo stuff is that no matter how many times you master it - eventually you always forget it, because you don't need it on a daily (or more like yearly) basis in the real world.
It's not about needing it in "the real world". It's about having fun. It's about the adrenalin rushing through your veins as the clock ticking down. It's about burst of joy when your brain just clicks and the invisible wall falls down, showing a path to the solution. I still do Putnam and IMO every year, I also occasionally take an hour or two during work and just solve Math problems. Solving problems is a hobby, jus…
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It's not about needing it in "the real world". It's about having fun. It's about the adrenalin rushing through your veins as the clock ticking down. It's about burst of joy when your brain just clicks and the invisible wall falls down, showing a path to the solution. I still do Putnam and IMO every year, I also occasionally take an hour or two during work and just solve Math problems. Solving problems is a hobby, jus…
What I'm saying is that aligning interviews to prefer candidates with this particular hobby (which is not related to the job) is not fair.
It's also detrimental to the business.
I see in the comments that some people conflate competitive programming and technical interviews. Technical interviews (at least in companies such as facebook and google) are usually much easier than competitive programming problems. The problem you find on leetcode for interview preparation would be considered beginner problems in competitions such as google code jam.
Probably. But if you are a student outside U.S where the opportunities are an order of magnitude less the only way to even land an interview with these companies is by doing competitive programming. Google selects students through APAC test in Asia where you have to be top n% in the leaderboard to even get an interview. Doing leetcode and all would not take you anywhere in these contests as you are competing with hardcore student programmers who have been practicing competitive programming their entire University life in search of an escape from the middle class. All the persons I know of in my country who works at Google or Facebook got their job through competitive programming.
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It's not about needing it in "the real world". It's about having fun. It's about the adrenalin rushing through your veins as the clock ticking down. It's about burst of joy when your brain just clicks and the invisible wall falls down, showing a path to the solution. I still do Putnam and IMO every year, I also occasionally take an hour or two during work and just solve Math problems. Solving problems is a hobby, jus…
What I'm saying is that aligning interviews to prefer candidates with this particular hobby (which is not related to the job) is not fair.
But the submission does not mention job interviews. The linked book (the author is “one of the organizers of the Finnish Olympiad in Informatics […] coached and led the Finnish team at several international programming contests, including the International Olympiad in Informatics”) is someone's labour of love, written for people interested in this hobby. It brings joy and satisfaction to many people, most of them young students. Why throw cold water on them, by reacting to mention of such a book with terms like “irritating”, based on something that others do in some other setting entirely? Or, even if bringing up job interviews is justified (no doubt your irritation is real), it would be nice IMO to at least preface the comment by clarifying that the comment is not about the hobby/competitive-programming world that are the subject and audience of this book, but about something else.
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That’s the entire point of those kinds of interviews. It’s a strong filter for “recent graduate” while maintaining plausible deniability for ageism. It has a secondary effect of filtering for “willing to do unpaid overtime”.
I think its more of aptitude test in a domain common to all programmers.
In my practical experience I find that to get the "aptitude" requires a lot of effort put in it. It definitely would vary depending on the person and his experiences but practicing it is very important to go forward.
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I use Spaced Repition for chess openings as I can't refer to a book while playing a tournament game. That's not the case for programming.
A lot of software developers are asked to code solutions to difficult problems using nothing other than a whiteboard. Given that under normal circumstances we use a computer, IDE, and the internet, I can see why some might opt to use spaced repetition to ensure employment.
10 years ago I was pretty handy with CLRS, but now I'd be hard pressed to implement quicksort without looking it up.
Has anybody gotten into this kind of programming post-college? Are there communities outside of high school and college competitions for this sort of thing?
Yeah, I think they are a terrific way to "keep your sword sharp". Jump start the neurons in the early AM or lazy summer day. As well as a way to learn new algorithms, new languages via problem solving. Code Jam had a particularly juicy one in the recent Qualifying Round, that could easily be part of a modern shadow rendering game engine. Just to put it into perspective, only around 1000 out of 25000 entrants were abl…
I imagine the juicy part is that there is no clear cut formula for determining the rotation from the area needed.
Thus the task is to come up with a fast approximation algorithm to work backwards.
So brute force way:
If area_needed > area_cast:
rotate_cube(delta)
delta=/2
else similar rotation on -delta