These...don't seem that hard? I mean I just took a class on Theory of Computation but I did pretty poorly in it and stopped paying attention when we switched to online. Most of these seem to be CFG/RE questions with fairly simple answers. I'd expect some more challenging stuff with constructions from a graduate entrance exam.
Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
111–120 of 173 posts
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did we get the atom bomb and the internet?
The perception of people in academia is that innovation is the product of knowledge. That may have been true in the US. It has been true pretty much nowhere else (not for anything else, the real world is rarely so kind as to present solutions on a plate). Korea, to name the best example, takes education extremely seriously...and they have had severe difficulty turning that into innovation (outside the chaebols, there…
For what it's worth, I currently have the top comment in the thread defending the point of computer science. I'm an undergrad studying in India.
My exams in college have not been about rote memorization. I've written quite a bit of code, and taken down quite a bit of notes for them. It totally depends on where someone studies in India. I do concede that the vast majority of college in India outside the "top 20" or so do seem to rely heavily on rote memorization.
- My notes taken for university: https://github.com/bollu/notes
- Code I wrote for university: https://github.com/bollu/IIIT-H-Code
> Stuff like the atom bomb are entrepreneurial triumphs by people who happened to be academics.
This seems like an odd position to defend. The mathematics that was necessary to even begin this line of investigation was worked out in academia by pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists. The "steelman" version of your argument I would phrase as thus:
> Academia does not have the incentive and funding structure to pull of projects such as the Manhattan project, and thus had to occur as a government project with unlimited funding.
I will gladly accept this. Unfortunately, it's not just academia that suffers from this. I don't think a lot of startups do useful research either. Most of the "original research" that I am aware of occurs at extremely well funded government labs, or lately the large tech companies that are pouring billions into AI.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#113I don't mean to toot my own horn too much here but I'm ecstatic to see how much of my cramming and memorization in college seems to have actually crystallized. I'm doing better than I thought I would have on these as I follow along.
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Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#114Academia was not initially tasked with the purpose of preparing students for careers in industry. Academic interests are purely that: academic. They serve no intended purpose necessarily beyond their contribution to knowledge, understanding, and often the enjoyment of academics. In some cases, there is overlap between concepts of interest to academics and those in industry. However, to expect an undergraduate degree…
Automata allow us to rigorously argue about computation based on the simplest machines we can conceive of. If you can not make strong claims about automata, then you have no chance of making strong claims on "real world" (whatever that is) machines.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people are more inclined to theoretical concepts, some people are more practical. Both have an understanding on how things work and/or an intuition, either by studying theoretical concepts or via practical, hands on experience. My issue with this, and this is mostly my own personal opinion, is not whether or not this subject is important and that we need to defend it, but whether teaching it to students of that…
There are schools which just teach you programming and computer skills and do a good job at it. But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. The degree is used as no more than an intelligence filter. This relegates anyone who has a practically oriented degree to being regarded as a second cl…
But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one.
I haven’t seen any corporate dev jobs that care about formal computer science during an interview. I only see that from BigTech and BigTech wannabes that think they need “smart people” (tm).
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people give theory a lot of crap. But that's normally because they are not comfortable with the material. If you are comfortable with the material, you see applications for it all over the place, and use it all the time. Sure, you don't have to ground your system in some kind of formal model (you can just code-til-it-works), but when you do I've found it always ends up as a far simpler and more resilient pro…
I found it also helps with the hardest problem in software development: naming things. Without knowledge of the theory it can be hard to come up with a descriptive name for some data structure/algorithm you created to solve your problem. With some knowledge of the theory you can more easily put a name to what you have created, making it easier for other people to understand and giving them something to Google if they…
> naming things
There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#117An exam was three problems, three hours, 33% of your final grade. That was my experience in CS algorithms. Lots of students switched majors because of that class.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people give theory a lot of crap. But that's normally because they are not comfortable with the material. If you are comfortable with the material, you see applications for it all over the place, and use it all the time. Sure, you don't have to ground your system in some kind of formal model (you can just code-til-it-works), but when you do I've found it always ends up as a far simpler and more resilient pro…
I think people are ready for things at certain times. I think history class was wasted on me in high school because I was a kid and didn't have much life experience. But years later with a better grasp on human nature I think I would have had a better grasp. Another example is a foreign language class. I took it in middle school, in high school and later in college. I learned lots and lots of theory for many years. B…
Agreed. The reason its not that way is that schools are mostly state-run daycare programs, setup so that parents can work, not a genuine implementation of skill building.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Web development, embedded systems, and game dev. I use FSMs, pushdown automata, and hierarchical state machines all the time.
For embedded systems and game development I definitely understand automata applications (from experience) but web development has me curious. Are you writing transpilers or perhaps something else (I also try to avoid web dev, so there's that).
Not OP but there are more than a few domains that can be modeled with automata, a shipping pipeline with approval steps is an example.
Re: Professor solves 240 computer science exam problems in 4 hours [video]
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Web development, embedded systems, and game dev. I use FSMs, pushdown automata, and hierarchical state machines all the time.
For embedded systems and game development I definitely understand automata applications (from experience) but web development has me curious. Are you writing transpilers or perhaps something else (I also try to avoid web dev, so there's that).
Mostly for user interfaces and modeling business processes. But I’ve also done some work on a super simple language for some of our non technical people to use for data transformation, and a templating system for form generation.