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I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

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Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#71

Post by danschumann »

general_failure wrote: post #64
danschumann wrote: post #61

Best stick to the shallow end of the pool if you can't swim. Do you program? Then you are a programmer. However, in some circles, where extremely complex problems need to be solved, they would say, " No ", because you can't do any of the programming required, and you'd be as useful to them as a rock, only less useful because you take air and food. I play volleyball occasionally, but if I went to the olympic men's tea…

I have to admit, I don't understand what you are trying to say. Are you saying puzzles are somehow the higher level of programming? You are completely wrong.

Lol.. How can you say I am wrong when you don't understand what I am saying?

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#72

Post by phkahler »

DigitalSea wrote: post #45

This is what really irks me about the industry as a whole. Large companies like Facebook and Google have hiring processes in place that aim to weed out the strong from the weak by making them solve complex algorithmic puzzles and solve them on a whiteboard, and for larger companies like Facebook or Google who have massive troves of data, this kind of makes sense to me, but only if you're hiring a programmer to work w…

>> However, what does not make sense to me is the asinine requirement that a web developer needs to know or understand algorithms. A front-end developer working with HTML, CSS and Javascript will never EVER need to know how to write an algorithm. In my 12 years as a developer thus far I have never needed to solve a complex math problem or write an algorithm to markup some HTML, the closest I get to math problems is simplistic operations in Javascript like calculating the scroll distance from the top of a page or mathematically moving an element around the page in a particular way and I generally use a calculator for these problems.

Perhaps some folks want to automate your job. That's not to say you're obsolete, just that some people want the machine to do absolutely everything automatically and that often means algorithmically. That's probably more effort than its worth in many cases, but sometimes it's well worth it.

A facebook feed or Google news have a fairly consistent layout, but what content goes into it is definitely chosen by an algorithm (IMHO a poor one at facebook) and the layout is probably tweaked by algorithms.

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#73

Post by chavesn »

DigitalSea wrote: post #45

This is what really irks me about the industry as a whole. Large companies like Facebook and Google have hiring processes in place that aim to weed out the strong from the weak by making them solve complex algorithmic puzzles and solve them on a whiteboard, and for larger companies like Facebook or Google who have massive troves of data, this kind of makes sense to me, but only if you're hiring a programmer to work w…

This idea that you have repeated several times...

> A front-end developer working with HTML, CSS and Javascript will never EVER need to know how to write an algorithm.

> In my 12 years as a developer thus far I have never needed to ... write an algorithm to markup some HTML

> A developer working with HTML, CSS and Javascript does not need to know algorithms whatsoever.

> Only a developer working with data or writing an algorithm to sort it should need to know that stuff.

This is either a spectacularly narrow view of what an algorithm is or it is totally wrong.

I've done both front-end and back-end/data for years. I frequently write "algorithms" on the front-end. Several of these were recent:

- Retry method for AJAX form submission

- Distribute assorted icons evenly among primary keys in a table.

- Dependency chain to check and execute asynchronously fetched scripts in the right order

- Even CSS can be somewhat algorithmic, as when I optimized by about 100X the hiding and showing of a huge amount of table rows with cascading style rules instead of JS

I don't think I need to go on, but the point is that if you think front-end developers don't need algorithms, then you are doing something wrong. I would check your assumptions about whether hiring for this is actually helpful. The companies you are talking about are leaders in both front-end and back-end technology. How do you think that came to be?

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#75

Post by seanflyon »

general_failure wrote: post #66
panarky wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I was a programmer, building CRUD apps for enterprises. I hated puzzles, too. Then I discovered quicksort, and graph search, and Bayesian inference, and Dijkstra, and Karatsuba. I'm still a programmer, but now I love puzzles, too.

Algorithms and puzzles are different things. If I asked someone what is an algorithm and they replied 'it's a puzzle where you solve...", I would laugh my ass off.

Algorithms are not puzzles, they are solutions to puzzles.

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#77

Post by baddox »

The author should probably at least take a stab at defining his usage of "puzzle." There's a big difference between a jigsaw puzzle and, say, the Portal games. In fact, jigsaw puzzles are a very different endeavor than logic/programming puzzles and many puzzle video games.

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#78

Post by MrQuincle »

I definitely agree with this sentiment. Recently someone dropped by for a job interview and revealed how much he loved to solve puzzles. Not that this influenced my decision in any way, but it made me reflect how different I felt w.r.t. this.

For me, it is not design either, it is something different.

I hate puzzles that are created by other people, where you have to follow the "hidden variable" which is in that case the brain of the maker of the puzzle. They already know the solution! I feel utterly useless solving a puzzle that has been already solved thousands of times by others. What's the point!? After 3 sudoku games I'm done with them. The same with IQ tests on national television. Why would I feel any reward in being able to crawl into the brain of a television writer concocting questions for a general audience? I think there are many much more interesting people in the world, than these guys. Their "puzzles" suck.

I also have never enjoyed solving mathematical problems in text books. I love math, and I read a lot of text books, although university is years ago. I think for people like me there should be different ways to teach them.

What makes me going is to find new things that haven't been known before. After I get some understanding of a field, I love to make up my own problems and solve these. The boundaries of such a problem are vague, it is not even known if it can be solved, but I am happy. Even if it turns out that I solve something that has been solved in the 13th century, I can't care less.

This is just a personal story, but perhaps someone can relate.

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#79

Post by MCRed »

This is a feature not a bug-- let me explain:

Recruiting is not necessarily easy. But you can judge a company by how they recruit people. Their hiring process-- given that talent is so critical-- tells you a great deal about the company.

If they do a terrible job, if they are arbitrary or capricious, or if they have discrimination as a policy (e.g.: I was in the room at Startup School when Zuckerberg said "don't hire anyone over 30, they just don't get it" (paraphrased).... then you know it's not a good place to waste your time interviewing.

I'd argue that the company with the puzzle saved you a lot of hassle-- you know they are arbitrary and did not put the effort into producing a competent hiring process, and this likely tells you that they won't respect you once you're on board as an employee either.

There are a great many of these "smells".

As I've gotten more experienced, and more in a position to be picky, here's my current gauntlet:

-- If they locate themselves in a place that guarantees a 2 hour commute for most employees, but don't allow working from home 3 days a week, or remote employees, that's a bad sign. Why pay for downtown office space-- as a startup, no less! -- when there's a lot of cheap offices out in the periphery where most people live? (That's the case in this town, maybe not in others.)

-- Asking for references. First off this is a legal minefield. A reference that isn't glowing is going to open themselves up to liability. Any well run business is only going to say you worked there for some period of time. And who is going to give people they think will give a bad reference? This one shows naivety.

-- Having a preference for ivy league. Google impeaches itself with this one in my mind.

Re: I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011)

#80

Post by swartkrans »

rdtsc wrote: post #68
panarky wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time I was a programmer, building CRUD apps for enterprises. I hated puzzles, too. Then I discovered quicksort, and graph search, and Bayesian inference, and Dijkstra, and Karatsuba. I'm still a programmer, but now I love puzzles, too.

> Then I discovered quicksort, and graph search, and Bayesian inference, and Dijkstra, and Karatsuba. I would guess most "discovered" those because they had to interview. The % of programmers who need to Karatsuba or Bayesian inference to finish their project is very much smaller than the % of programmers who thought "oh shit, I better learn this because Google and Facebook keep asking about graph theory". It it is p…

Actually I think graph theory is pretty important. For example many programming contexts have to deal with dependencies, and often dependencies form a directed acyclic graph. Understanding that will aid in writing better, more reliable code. Path finding is also pretty important, especially if you want to make a game.
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