Live data from Hacker News

"The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

edweissman.com

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: "The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

#41
First of all, this is awesome. Thank you!

Secondly, I am reading through this and came across this:

14. Should I still be a programmer? "I lack the fundamentals of Computer Science, the things every programmer should know: Algo's, Data Structures, Operating Systems an understanding of compilers and being profficient with linux."

Relax. That's true for 99% of all programmers.

I feel like I am in the same exact boat as the original poster. However, I am a senior in college who has several interviews lined up. I have interviewed several times before and always flop on the "fundamental questions". Is there any further advice someone can give me? Thanks in advanced.

Re: "The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

#42

First of all, this is awesome. Thank you! Secondly, I am reading through this and came across this: 14. Should I still be a programmer? "I lack the fundamentals of Computer Science, the things every programmer should know: Algo's, Data Structures, Operating Systems an understanding of compilers and being profficient with linux." Relax. That's true for 99% of all programmers. I feel like I am in the same exact boat as…

"I have interviewed several times before and always flop on the 'fundamental questions'. Is there any further advice someone can give me? Thanks in advanced."

Have you considered learning the fundamentals? Its not a snarky comment I'm genuinely curious.

If you are programming, find you enjoy it, and wish to continue doing it for money, continuing education should be right up there on your list of things to do. (whether you have a Ph.D in CS or just a high school diploma, new stuff is coming out all the time).

There are a lot of free resources now online. You can get the syllabus and curriculum for classses that are taught in places like Stanford or MIT or UC Berkeley. So even if you spend the next two years of nights and weekends 'filling in the gaps' in your knowledge you will find that not only do you get better at your 'day job' but you will start aceing those 'fundamental' questions.

There was a time when to do this you would have to audit a class at a nearby university which imposed limits based on schedules, location, etc. But those times are behind us now. Take an old desktop machine from the e-waste dumpster behind some company, load up FreeBSD or Linux on it, and start doing the home work from some of these courses. The fundamentals are fundamentals because they apply universally, and you don't need a fancy rig to compare the performances of various sorts, or explore bloom filters, or key exchange algorithms. You can run MySQL on crappy hardware for the size databases you need to run to learn SQL.

Granted the assumption is that you can currently access the internet and you live somewhere that is currently consuming IT hardware (pretty much most of Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand. and the N. American continent).

If you are a 'Senior in college' and your major was CS and you flop the fundamental questions then there is a bigger problem here.

Re: "The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

#45
This is amazing stuff - thanks much!

I made a slightly more readable HTML version (with linked TOC and back links) here -> http://bit.ly/lSLTVT

This could be converted to an ePub I think, with the linked TOC. If this a problem let me know and I will take it down, or maybe you could post it on http://edweissman.com/53640595 to get the linked TOC?

Re: "The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

#47
post #21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I'm not sure what edw519 would think of me sharing his work online, I did the less wrong thing. I'm pretty sure you've got mail.

No problem. I'm kinda curious what it would look like, too. Thanks for the interest and the well wishes, chanux.

Now that you are ok with it (You are amazing) here I post the zip that contains the pdf, mobi and epub.

http://www.mediafire.com/?b736ucvz8rn7phu

Re: "The Best of edw519" is now free. Reverse Happy Birthday

#48

This is amazing stuff - thanks much! I made a slightly more readable HTML version (with linked TOC and back links) here -> http://bit.ly/lSLTVT This could be converted to an ePub I think, with the linked TOC. If this a problem let me know and I will take it down, or maybe you could post it on http://edweissman.com/53640595 to get the linked TOC?

Thank you hieronymusN. Much prettier than mine.

One problem though - you lost most of the paragraph formatting and spacing; you can see the difference on almost every entry if you look closely enough. Fix that and I'll just put your version on my blog.

[Once again: thank you everyone for the kind words and feedback. You made my day!]

Post reply on HN