4 ms·

You think software for those computers that are better at diagnosing was created by engineers who don't know the difference between a stable and unstable sortin

• donw 10y ago
  There is a massive delta between knowing that, and being able to code examples of each from memory on a whiteboard during an interview. Also, it may surprise you, but there are many highly experienced and extremely capable programmers that didn't study computer science in college. Filtering those people out because they can't answer programming trivia questions is, at best, hugely short-sighted.
• chris_7 10y ago
  If you're writing diagnosis software, your approach to sorting should be "use sort()". Sorting is not your core competency, diagnosis is.
• bsder 10y ago
  I have discovered over and over that most genuinely good things are created by one smart person. After that person creates it, then the masses can run with it. Bittorrent is a great example. All the pieces had existed for a while, but Bram Cohen put them all together into one place. After that, lots of people created other BitTorrent clients. However, without that first, smart person, it wouldn't have appeared.
• kafkaesq 10y ago
  Actually, yes. It's very likely that the core algorithms for these systems were written by "crossover" types (e.g. math PhDs) who are perfectly capable of getting up to speed with the esoteric aspects of these systems, without having to go back and master the standard undergraduate CS curriculum. It's called being flexible and able to learn, and it's the single most important thing you're supposed to get out of your formal education.