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Re: undefined

#101

Post by Jtsummers »

thoughtpalette wrote: post #97
kazinator wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of this rule. If a company has three positions, for which 15 equally excellent candidates are shortlisted, and then three months later another position opens up, one of the remaining 12 will have a shot at it. (Of course, the not-shortlisted ones, not likely.)

Google, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon all had a minimum six month re-apply period when I last interviewed with them.

When was that? 2 years ago I was interviewing with Facebook and when I didn't get picked up for a position they offered to put me in for another one to interview a couple weeks later (I opted out, it was clear from the interviews and discussions WFH was considered temporary and I didn't want to switch jobs just to have to quit later since I had no intention of moving to a high cost of living area).

Re: undefined

#102

Post by WoodenChair »

tikhonj wrote: post #91
WoodenChair wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Learning binary and knowing what binary is are two separate things. I don't think you need to learn binary to learn to code. Been doing this for 25 years working at some big name companies, I don't know binary other than 1 is on, 0 is off. You're wearing your lack of CS knowledge like some kind of badge of honor. Of course you don't need deep CS knowledge to be a competent programmer. But almost undoubtedly you'll…

"Knowing" binary isn't some deep, fundamental CS knowledge, it's a party trick. Knowing about different number systems in general is nice, but hardly foundational. The actual choice of what we consider part of the "core" CS curriculum is pretty arbitrary. Why do we consider, say, binary part of that but semantics not? Would it be "gatekeeping" to say that you can't be a good programmer without a passing knowledge of,…

> "Knowing" binary isn't some deep, fundamental CS knowledge, it's a party trick.

Reread my comment I never said binary in-and-of itself is "deep" knowledge. I said not knowing it is a proxy for a lack of CS knowledge more generally.

Re: undefined

#103

Post by redundantly »

DeltaCoast wrote: post #53

I worked at Codecademy - you're right the getting stuck part hurts people moving forward, we spent a lot of time trying to help people without outright spitting it out - it was less about runtime errors and more about the concept. I'm not sure that an AI spitting out an answer is the right solution to help people learn - we also thought about different forms (projects, embeds in articles, tutors, etc) Another Codecad…

The site doesn't work for me in Safari. Tried 01. Setting Up and clicking run doesn't do anything but shake the Terminal box. Even if I put in garbage it does nothing.

Re: undefined

#104

Post by denton-scratch »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #45
hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand the hurdle to "learning binary". It's not necessary to understand how binary works to complete a hello world program, but I think it's something that you want to get a handle on pretty quickly. If I recall correctly, we only spent a few minutes on it in a larger lesson about different schemes for representing numbers in Comp Sci I. I don't think I've performed binary arithmetic since that cl…

By your own admission you have never used the knowledge you learned. Why exactly is it “good to know how it works” if you literally have never used that knowledge? Why is it “something you want to get a handle on pretty quickly” if you don’t touch binary? Are there places where it would come up? Most certainly. Is it required learning for every single dev out there? Highly debatable.

> Highly debatable.

For the sake of debate: call me old-fashioned, but I don't ever want to rely on code from a "developer" who isn't familiar with binary notation.

Re: undefined

#105

Post by thoughtpalette »

Jtsummers wrote: post #101
thoughtpalette wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon all had a minimum six month re-apply period when I last interviewed with them.

When was that? 2 years ago I was interviewing with Facebook and when I didn't get picked up for a position they offered to put me in for another one to interview a couple weeks later (I opted out, it was clear from the interviews and discussions WFH was considered temporary and I didn't want to switch jobs just to have to quit later since I had no intention of moving to a high cost of living area).

Looks like the FB one was in Oct, 2020. Google was in Nov, 2020, Amazon was in 2022.

Re: undefined

#106

Post by kyleee »

Jtsummers wrote: post #101
thoughtpalette wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon all had a minimum six month re-apply period when I last interviewed with them.

When was that? 2 years ago I was interviewing with Facebook and when I didn't get picked up for a position they offered to put me in for another one to interview a couple weeks later (I opted out, it was clear from the interviews and discussions WFH was considered temporary and I didn't want to switch jobs just to have to quit later since I had no intention of moving to a high cost of living area).

That probably speaks more to the fact that they are lax with the rule for a reasonably well qualified candidates who they actually may want to hire.

The rule in the first place is probably targeted at the bulk of lower quality candidates to avoid them constantly reapplying

Re: undefined

#107

Post by Kalium »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #83
Kalium wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most manifestations will be in the middle of something more nuanced than a demo statement, the people in question will often lack the vocabulary to describe what they're seeing, and it's rarely anyone's first or even fifth thought that addition is going wonky. With that in mind, I think it's perhaps a stretch to call floating point error plainly obvious. You're right, of course. This would be only marginally faster i…

The example is overly simplified, sure. But even if it’s in the middle of a swath of other operations, it will still result in very similar behavior. You’re likely never to get a clean number once a floating point error happens, and the result will be slightly off and seem to not be rounded. Searching “why is my arithmetic operation not rounded”, I got https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/floatingpoint.html as the thir…

IMO, being good at searching is a skill that's only really useful when you have some idea what kind of question you're looking for an answer to.

I don't think we're actually talking specifically about binary. I am treating the reference to binary as a stand-in for the mathematical fundamentals of computing, rather than a narrow comment on understanding binary and bitwise operations.

Re: undefined

#108

Post by jlarocco »

joshmanders wrote: post #67
tensor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've literally had to use knowledge of binary and number representation just last month in order to implement a lower level protocol. You may not use it in your simple CRUD app jobs but it's absolutely not "some old thing people only had to use back in the day."

> You may not use it in your simple CRUD app jobs but it's absolutely not "some old thing people only had to use back in the day." My point is that most jobs are simple CRUD app jobs or positioning divs on a screen, not deep seeded CS stuff.

> My point is that most jobs are simple CRUD app jobs or positioning divs on a screen...

It's really not "most jobs." Although I do agree that a CS or software engineering degree is overkill for that type of stuff.

Also, "knowing binary" is a strawman, and not a very good one. A newbie developer getting confused by bit flags isn't a big deal. Point them to Wikipedia and let them read about it.

The much bigger problem is when inexperienced developers go off and write a ton of bad spaghetti code, re-invent a bunch of wheels they never learned about, and generally just write crap because they're clueless about best practices (or even any practices at all). Now the clueless newbie is slowing down everybody else and creating a maintenance nightmare.

TBH, most new developers are pretty bad (self taught, university taught, or whatever). The important thing is having experienced people around to point them in the right direction and help them get "real world" experience.

Gate keeping isn't always a bad thing.

Re: undefined

#109

Post by mynameisvlad »

Kalium wrote: post #107
mynameisvlad wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example is overly simplified, sure. But even if it’s in the middle of a swath of other operations, it will still result in very similar behavior. You’re likely never to get a clean number once a floating point error happens, and the result will be slightly off and seem to not be rounded. Searching “why is my arithmetic operation not rounded”, I got https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/floatingpoint.html as the thir…

IMO, being good at searching is a skill that's only really useful when you have some idea what kind of question you're looking for an answer to. I don't think we're actually talking specifically about binary. I am treating the reference to binary as a stand-in for the mathematical fundamentals of computing, rather than a narrow comment on understanding binary and bitwise operations.

> IMO, being good at searching is a skill that's only really useful when you have some idea what kind of question you're looking for an answer to.

"why is my arithmetic operation not rounded" seems like something anyone facing the problem would ask. That's pretty much the root issue in words.

> I don't think we're actually talking specifically about binary.

I mean, that is literally what the thread you replied to was discussing.

The comment I replied to explicitly talks about binary and their use of it, the comment they replied to originally also specifically calls out the OP’s quote which talks directly about binary. You can choose to deviate from that if you want to make a point, but the thread has always explicitly been about binary and that is what we should actually be discussing.

Re: undefined

#110

Post by asow92 »

echelon wrote: post #62
asow92 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have made learning binary a game. Learning binary isn't difficult and should only take a few days to a week of lecture to grasp a sufficient understanding.

> should only take a few days This doesn't work for everybody! Let people learn in the direction that interests them. The highest energy reward function first. Once they feel rewarded, then let them learn theory. They'll have a deeper appreciation and the stamina to press deeper.

Hard pill to swallow: Doing things that are good for us that we don’t necessarily like is a part of growing up.
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