4 ms·

This is amazingly well written. You covered a good deal of any introduction to computational theory course in a straightforward, well motivated matter. This is

This is amazingly well written. You covered a good deal of any introduction to computational theory course in a straightforward, well motivated matter. This is definitely something I'll be passing around to some of my bootcamp friends who are curious taste some of the theory they don't get exposure to. Ironically, what I thought what made this so effective and interesting was that it dug into the theory of a really really easy programming problem. This is a reasonable homework assignment for any first year student. Maybe not month one, but year one for sure. > That suggests the question: Is balanced parentheses a good interview question? If you just needed a solution to solve the problem and maybe check a few edge cases; yeah, it's great because it's simple. If you're using it to broach a conversation on automata, regular expressions, and context free languages well yeah delving into that is bad unless you're writing real parsers/compilers at this gig. I was really put off my the musing over whether it's a good interview question. For such a beautifully written piece it seems to say: if you don't expect candidates to know as much as this don't ask it at all. If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. ... But if I ask you to make an apple pie I'm not going to ding you for starting with apples, flour, sugar, and butter.

braythwayt 8y ago
> If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. > ... > But if I ask you to make an apple pie I'm not going to ding you for starting with apples, flour, sugar, and butter. That is most eloquently put, thank you! There's a reason that "Food Scientist" and "Chef" are related disciplines, but not the same job.
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  You probably know, but I should have added that the first line was a quote from Carl Sagan.
braythwayt 8y ago
I took your feedback seriously, tell me what you think: https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.github.com/commit/bec3a460c0fcd8afa78502c8af79b3e19d1c6e6f https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.github.com/commit/bec...
- kjeetgill 8y ago
  I like it! I think it cuts closer to what I think people generally should inow at the very least. > An obvious question is, _Do you need to know the difference between a regular language and a context-free language if all you want to do is write some code that recognizes balanced parentheses?_ You have a real talent for motivating the conversation around theory. I like the subject matter so I rarely need more than: hey, I think this is cool. But when I share it with others it says all the things I can't!
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
> If you're using it to broach a conversation on automata, regular expressions, and context free languages well yeah delving into that is bad unless you're writing real parsers/compilers at this gig. If it is a compiler gig, I don't think we can get much mileage out out of the balance parentheses problem. Language implementors either just deal with paren balancing as part of the parser or, if they want better error recovery, write a simple paren balancer as a separate pass between lexing and real parsing. In the latter case, implementors will just go with the most simplest solution available and won't bother with a PDA (since it really isn't necessary). If you really want to test a language implementor, ask them how they would implement a parser for a language that allows < and > to be used as both comparison operators and generic type parentheses.

braythwayt 8y ago

> If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. > ... > But if I ask you to make an apple pie I'm not going to ding you for starting with apples, flour, sugar, and butter. That is most eloquently put, thank you! There's a reason that "Food Scientist" and "Chef" are related disciplines, but not the same job.

kjeetgill 8y ago
You probably know, but I should have added that the first line was a quote from Carl Sagan.

braythwayt 8y ago

I took your feedback seriously, tell me what you think: https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.github.com/commit/bec3a460c0fcd8afa78502c8af79b3e19d1c6e6f https://github.com/raganwald/raganwald.github.com/commit/bec...

kjeetgill 8y ago
I like it! I think it cuts closer to what I think people generally should inow at the very least. > An obvious question is, _Do you need to know the difference between a regular language and a context-free language if all you want to do is write some code that recognizes balanced parentheses?_ You have a real talent for motivating the conversation around theory. I like the subject matter so I rarely need more than: hey, I think this is cool. But when I share it with others it says all the things I can't!

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

> If you're using it to broach a conversation on automata, regular expressions, and context free languages well yeah delving into that is bad unless you're writing real parsers/compilers at this gig. If it is a compiler gig, I don't think we can get much mileage out out of the balance parentheses problem. Language implementors either just deal with paren balancing as part of the parser or, if they want better error recovery, write a simple paren balancer as a separate pass between lexing and real parsing. In the latter case, implementors will just go with the most simplest solution available and won't bother with a PDA (since it really isn't necessary). If you really want to test a language implementor, ask them how they would implement a parser for a language that allows < and > to be used as both comparison operators and generic type parentheses.