4 ms·

I agree that boring things shouldn't be memorized, and that being familiar with the concept of a regular language helps identify where a regular expression coul

by kaens 16y ago

I agree that boring things shouldn't be memorized, and that being familiar with the concept of a regular language helps identify where a regular expression could help. Two points: + A lot of programmers aren't familiar with the concept of a regular language, especially those that are hobbyists, or who went to shitty schools. Sad but true. + Regular expressions are useful commonly enough that I would be very surprised if an okay programmer with any sort of experience under their belt couldn't remember at least [] . * ? + . I definitely agree with your main point. There is, however, a weird subjective layer of knowledge that tends to be present in developers of any experience. That doesn't mean that I would look down on an individual programmer who claimed experience that didn't know how to make a regex character class off the top of their head, but I would be a bit surprised.

cousin_it 16y ago
I agree. When you're planning to invade Iraq, you need people who shoot well, and you need people who have been to Iraq before. They don't have to be the same people, though. We had a great experience at one of our contract jobs: we found a smart math student with no webdev experience, and he did most of the programming while I constantly consulted him on "platform issues" and jumped in to code any tricky parts he had problems with. He became a competent webdev in about two months - way faster than it took me to learn this stuff by myself - then I handed the project over to him and left. I wonder why other employers don't do this more: mix experienced programmers with smart newbies who come from hard-science backgrounds. Seems to be a winning combination.