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Of course if you already have a job in tech and 3 other companies on the resume it doesn't matter so much. For people straight out of university their side pro

by dewey 6y ago

Of course if you already have a job in tech and 3 other companies on the resume it doesn't matter so much. For people straight out of university their side projects are interesting to recruiters though as there's not that many other references you have. This is even more true for people not coming through the normal CS pipeline, working on their own projects and shipping something is a good way to show that you know what you are doing. Especially when so many people coming out of CS studies don't even know how to code.

pjmlp 6y ago
That is so bizarre to me, in Portugal pure CS theory without any kind of project deliverables is a math degree specialisation, what one would do the last two years of a 5 year degree in maths. Spending 5 years in any kind of engineering degree without being evaluated just doesn't happen, unless one would be cheating on their project assignments.
- dewey 6y ago
  > Spending 5 years in any kind of engineering degree without being evaluated just doesn't happen Passing programming assignments or university projects is very different to actually knowing how to code or think about solutions on your own I think.
  - SJC_Hacker 6y ago
    Main difference would be the time pressure. Our coding assignments could be done generally at our own pace, though of course there were deadlines. Also the "tricky algorithm" and "off the top of your head" aspects generally weren't there - of course way back when, there wasn't a whole lot of code public so you couldn't just copy off the internet. though of course some cheated and copied each other's work. Perhaps universities should start acting like more like what the companies are testing for nowadays, in order to prepare their students better. Timed coding quizzes every week, automatically validated like HackerRank, Leetcode, etc.. It wouldn't even have to be these tricky algorithms - maybe just a something like implement quicksort, etc. (without using the API calls) in like 30 minutes.
- hansvm 6y ago
  It's not too hard to get passable marks in a subject you don't understand well and then forget most it. Suppose a given class has a 40/60 applied/theory split. Our hypothetical student is average in some sense and gets 75% on the theory. Now if they get at least 37.5% on the applied portion they barely pass the class. There are minimum GPA considerations, and you might need at least a C in some classes rather than a D to continue, but it's pretty common to spread the hardest classes out so that you only have one super hard class to focus on each semester, and easier courses and generals will help pad out the Ds on your transcript to maintain a passing GPA. Throw in a retake or two for a couple screw-ups, and you still graduate in 4 years with a whisper of a shadow of an ability to program. Filtering for high GPAs and whatnot can help (or it might exclude people who had family emergencies or other complicating factors and still know their shit), but in the worst case that's just a measure of the amount of time and dedication spent per course. You also probably need to set a pretty high threshold -- you can bomb all your algorithms, data structures, and applied programming courses and still have a 3.5+ GPA if you do well enough elsewhere.
- SJC_Hacker 6y ago
  People have different standards of "know how to code". It could means you were able to solve this tricky algorithm problem I gave you in < 30 minutes. It could means you know some of the darker corners of C++, know the STL backwards and forwards without having to consult references (like whats the complexity of inserting into a map vs unordered_map), how to do a custom comparator for std::priority_queue, or custom class for unordered_map (again without looking it up), know how to use std::function etc. Alot of that stuff was not taught at university at least where I went - the profs/TAs largely didn't care how your code looked, as long as it ran correctly, we didn't have timed coding exercise- the timed exams were writing out things by hand, mainly in pseudocode. Of course this was all 20+ years ago so perhaps things have changed.

by dewey 6y ago

pjmlp 6y ago

That is so bizarre to me, in Portugal pure CS theory without any kind of project deliverables is a math degree specialisation, what one would do the last two years of a 5 year degree in maths. Spending 5 years in any kind of engineering degree without being evaluated just doesn't happen, unless one would be cheating on their project assignments.

dewey 6y ago
> Spending 5 years in any kind of engineering degree without being evaluated just doesn't happen Passing programming assignments or university projects is very different to actually knowing how to code or think about solutions on your own I think.
- SJC_Hacker 6y ago
  Main difference would be the time pressure. Our coding assignments could be done generally at our own pace, though of course there were deadlines. Also the "tricky algorithm" and "off the top of your head" aspects generally weren't there - of course way back when, there wasn't a whole lot of code public so you couldn't just copy off the internet. though of course some cheated and copied each other's work. Perhaps universities should start acting like more like what the companies are testing for nowadays, in order to prepare their students better. Timed coding quizzes every week, automatically validated like HackerRank, Leetcode, etc.. It wouldn't even have to be these tricky algorithms - maybe just a something like implement quicksort, etc. (without using the API calls) in like 30 minutes.
hansvm 6y ago
It's not too hard to get passable marks in a subject you don't understand well and then forget most it. Suppose a given class has a 40/60 applied/theory split. Our hypothetical student is average in some sense and gets 75% on the theory. Now if they get at least 37.5% on the applied portion they barely pass the class. There are minimum GPA considerations, and you might need at least a C in some classes rather than a D to continue, but it's pretty common to spread the hardest classes out so that you only have one super hard class to focus on each semester, and easier courses and generals will help pad out the Ds on your transcript to maintain a passing GPA. Throw in a retake or two for a couple screw-ups, and you still graduate in 4 years with a whisper of a shadow of an ability to program. Filtering for high GPAs and whatnot can help (or it might exclude people who had family emergencies or other complicating factors and still know their shit), but in the worst case that's just a measure of the amount of time and dedication spent per course. You also probably need to set a pretty high threshold -- you can bomb all your algorithms, data structures, and applied programming courses and still have a 3.5+ GPA if you do well enough elsewhere.
SJC_Hacker 6y ago
People have different standards of "know how to code". It could means you were able to solve this tricky algorithm problem I gave you in < 30 minutes. It could means you know some of the darker corners of C++, know the STL backwards and forwards without having to consult references (like whats the complexity of inserting into a map vs unordered_map), how to do a custom comparator for std::priority_queue, or custom class for unordered_map (again without looking it up), know how to use std::function etc. Alot of that stuff was not taught at university at least where I went - the profs/TAs largely didn't care how your code looked, as long as it ran correctly, we didn't have timed coding exercise- the timed exams were writing out things by hand, mainly in pseudocode. Of course this was all 20+ years ago so perhaps things have changed.