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True. But my goal here is to get somebody to learn programming to the point where they could reasonably apply for a job. The question is, would you hire somebod

True. But my goal here is to get somebody to learn programming to the point where they could reasonably apply for a job. The question is, would you hire somebody who didn't know "stack, dynamic memory, pointers and so on" if they were willing to learn as needed?

chopsueyar 15y ago
No.
jordanmessina 15y ago
Everyone claims in a job interview they're willing to learn as needed. You hire programmers because they know how to program and will be valuable from the start. Not some novice who did some rails tutorial.
Hominem 15y ago
This is pretty interesting to me. "stack, dynamic memory, pointers and so on" for the most part is not something I've had to think about while programming in the last couple years. For the most part I can ignore them, and I doubt any new developers that learn on the job would pay any special attention to these issues, but there is always a case that pops where this knowledge suddenly becomes very important, and having the background knowledge is important. Let me give you an example. I got called in to diagnose a problem with a c# web service. They were getting constant OutOfMemory exceptions. The team's solution was to increase memory and then throw up their hands when it that didn't fix the issue. After looking at the code I saw that they were creating a 500mb string. They figured this was a-ok because they had 4gb of memory. They did not know what a string really is, even in a language like C# the memory has to be contiguous. If they had ever worked with C they would have known this and we could have saved time and money.
T-R 15y ago
"Willing to learn as needed" needs to be reserved for things like specific frameworks, which can be picked up quickly if you understand the concepts they're built on and have done something similar. Pointers are a core concept, and in particular, they're one of the weed-out points of CS curricula. Sure, you can get some things done without them, but they're critical for understanding bugs or performance issues that arise due to the underlying implementation, and likely to take more time to understand than things that usually fall into the category of "learning as needed on the job".

chopsueyar 15y ago

No.

jordanmessina 15y ago

Everyone claims in a job interview they're willing to learn as needed. You hire programmers because they know how to program and will be valuable from the start. Not some novice who did some rails tutorial.

Hominem 15y ago

This is pretty interesting to me. "stack, dynamic memory, pointers and so on" for the most part is not something I've had to think about while programming in the last couple years. For the most part I can ignore them, and I doubt any new developers that learn on the job would pay any special attention to these issues, but there is always a case that pops where this knowledge suddenly becomes very important, and having the background knowledge is important. Let me give you an example. I got called in to diagnose a problem with a c# web service. They were getting constant OutOfMemory exceptions. The team's solution was to increase memory and then throw up their hands when it that didn't fix the issue. After looking at the code I saw that they were creating a 500mb string. They figured this was a-ok because they had 4gb of memory. They did not know what a string really is, even in a language like C# the memory has to be contiguous. If they had ever worked with C they would have known this and we could have saved time and money.

T-R 15y ago

"Willing to learn as needed" needs to be reserved for things like specific frameworks, which can be picked up quickly if you understand the concepts they're built on and have done something similar. Pointers are a core concept, and in particular, they're one of the weed-out points of CS curricula. Sure, you can get some things done without them, but they're critical for understanding bugs or performance issues that arise due to the underlying implementation, and likely to take more time to understand than things that usually fall into the category of "learning as needed on the job".