3 ms·

>>If you disregard existing knowledge, you are likely to spend a lot of time cooking up something complex and half-assed that creates an unnecessary maintenance

by kamaal 8y ago

>>If you disregard existing knowledge, you are likely to spend a lot of time cooking up something complex and half-assed that creates an unnecessary maintenance load. Unless you are stuck on an Island coding during a vacation, not one person on earth faces this kind of a situation. Almost anybody doing anything apart from basic beginner level coding work knows to look up to a solution on the internet if a solution is not scaling already.

fsloth 8y ago
"Almost anybody doing anything apart from basic beginner level coding work knows to look up to a solution on the internet if a solution is not scaling already" This applies to some practical areas, but some are murky and need more than agile google-fu to waid through of an algorithmic jungle to a solution that provides added value to end user. There is a discipline and domain dependent threshold where the internet suddenly becomes obscure and unhelpful when one is trying to find solutions. In these instances either you are solving the wrong problem, or the problem is quite complex and/or does not have a closed form/ready solution. The best thing to happen in these instances is that one can limit ones input domain just so that it maps to some algorithmic concept or another. It's not rocket science, but in these instances having an intuitive feel toward the big O behaviour and various algorithmic constructs is really, really helpfull. Sometimes you just need to implement your own fudged QR decomposition and understand a little bit of numerics, or build custom octrees and whatnot. Couldn't really do it without my books. I do CAD and computational geometry stuff, YMMV.
- kamaal 8y ago
  In your area of work, the domain is computational geometry, so asking questions there is perfectly fine. In fact that is exactly I was trying to imply. Questions need to be about the area of your work, rather than testing candidates on proxy subject totally irrelevant to their jobs.

by kamaal 8y ago

fsloth 8y ago

"Almost anybody doing anything apart from basic beginner level coding work knows to look up to a solution on the internet if a solution is not scaling already" This applies to some practical areas, but some are murky and need more than agile google-fu to waid through of an algorithmic jungle to a solution that provides added value to end user. There is a discipline and domain dependent threshold where the internet suddenly becomes obscure and unhelpful when one is trying to find solutions. In these instances either you are solving the wrong problem, or the problem is quite complex and/or does not have a closed form/ready solution. The best thing to happen in these instances is that one can limit ones input domain just so that it maps to some algorithmic concept or another. It's not rocket science, but in these instances having an intuitive feel toward the big O behaviour and various algorithmic constructs is really, really helpfull. Sometimes you just need to implement your own fudged QR decomposition and understand a little bit of numerics, or build custom octrees and whatnot. Couldn't really do it without my books. I do CAD and computational geometry stuff, YMMV.

kamaal 8y ago
In your area of work, the domain is computational geometry, so asking questions there is perfectly fine. In fact that is exactly I was trying to imply. Questions need to be about the area of your work, rather than testing candidates on proxy subject totally irrelevant to their jobs.