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Curious as I'm already in the industry, but I had a look at this person's GitHub profile and it says that he's still looking for graduate opportunities (finishi

by oars 6y ago

Curious as I'm already in the industry, but I had a look at this person's GitHub profile and it says that he's still looking for graduate opportunities (finishing uni soon). Someone with this level of calibre should easily get a job after graduation right? Or are college graduates these days trained to a level where this type of project is expected hence it's still competitive to find an entry level role after college?

capableweb 6y ago
Getting a job as a programmer is less about being a savant programmer and more about your soft-skills like communication and connections, at least if you're aiming to work in a team environment. It helps to be a great programmer in order to get hired, but I never found that to be a requirement, you can always teach people to be great programmers. But if they are not great at communication or have other "personal faults" like easily irritable or arrogant, it's much harder to help them improve without spending a disproportionate amount of time helping them.
accurrent 6y ago
As a fresh grad I'd say the latter. Especially if you are applying for Software only roles in large web companies. Side projects often count for nothing in these cases. Its more important to be able to whiteboard.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Landing a job has very little to do with programming skill and very much to do with networking and the way in which you present yourself and what the company is looking for. So the answer to your question depends entirely on external factors. Python jobs in general seem to be extremely rare compared to frontend JS and backend Rails, which I found disappointing several years ago. But python jobs do exist, and the author should find no trouble landing one with "Cloned Redis in 230 lines" as a bullet point. :)
- user5994461 6y ago
  Jobs these days are just sending you back an automated coding test on HackerRank/Codility after you apply, so finding a job has a lot to do with having some programming skills. There's quite a bit of python jobs coming up in the past few years, if we're talking about US tech hubs. Location is everything.
damnencryption 6y ago
Others have already given possible reasons, another might be that they don't want to accept certain jobs or opportunities and are overly selective. They may not want to work yet but are adding any offers to the pile to negotiate better later. I know a similar person who is good with designing distributed systems and programming in general. They had a offer from facebook but declined. They want to get a good paying cybersec job but alas there aren't any at good companies. Currently working on gigs and being broke.
danielscrubs 6y ago
I’d rather take the humble exploratory academic than a cocky programmer. Just as an example he writes: “ Unfortunately many programmers, due to their lack of experience, of some knowledge of computer architecture(s), or of an in-depth understanding of the task they are given, spend countless hours by making life harder for themselves in the name of marginal performance gains, often trading many other conveniences (such as type safety, garbage collection, etc) too.” And then he himself doesn’t use type safety making the text very superfluous. As others have brought up he then uses pythonwrappers for the heavy lifting. It’s just a very shallow thought process that you are supposed to hammer out in the university. Modify the README to just say: I wanted to scratch an itch so I built PoC for a Redis alternative, and it would have been an amazing achievement. Now? Not so much.
- boramalper 6y ago
  I am sorry to see that you presume I am a cocky programmer. :) > And then he himself doesn’t use type safety making the text very superfluous. You are partially right, in that I did not use type annotations thoroughly in my code. Though what I had in mind was that there are much "better" languages out there (compared to C) with strong static/gradual type systems. > As others have brought up he then uses pythonwrappers for the heavy lifting. Indeed, and you can read my answer to that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101200 > It’s just a very shallow thought process that you are supposed to hammer out in the university. If you specify what you refer to by "it", I would be happy to respond but it feels more like a personal attack now.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  > it would have been an amazing achievement 250 lines of Python code wrapping C libs is an amazing achievement..? This is so small I wouldn't even classify it as a project personally.
  - boramalper 6y ago
    Author here: I am not arguing that this is an amazing achievement, but I think you are being overly dismissive here, which I find unfair, and think you are missing the point: It is 250 lines because I was experienced enough to implement it in 250 lines. Again, it's a small proof-of-concept, but the concepts employed there aren't necessarily beginner level: 1. Asynchronous I/O using `asyncio.Protocol`. 2. Sans I/O networking, see https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/ https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/ . 3. Python performance optimisations (e.g. knowing where to choose `collections.deque` over `list`) 4. Knowledge of the modern Python ecosystem (e.g. using uvloop to for event loop).
boramalper 6y ago
Author here, I have recently been offered a job at Stripe, but did not update my bio. Thank you for your kind words!
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y ago
>Or are college graduates these days trained to a level where this type of project is expected Well, I would be unpleasantly surprised if wrapping python's dicts with a simple API was beyond the capabilities of an average college grad.

by oars 6y ago

capableweb 6y ago

Getting a job as a programmer is less about being a savant programmer and more about your soft-skills like communication and connections, at least if you're aiming to work in a team environment. It helps to be a great programmer in order to get hired, but I never found that to be a requirement, you can always teach people to be great programmers. But if they are not great at communication or have other "personal faults" like easily irritable or arrogant, it's much harder to help them improve without spending a disproportionate amount of time helping them.

accurrent 6y ago

As a fresh grad I'd say the latter. Especially if you are applying for Software only roles in large web companies. Side projects often count for nothing in these cases. Its more important to be able to whiteboard.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Landing a job has very little to do with programming skill and very much to do with networking and the way in which you present yourself and what the company is looking for. So the answer to your question depends entirely on external factors. Python jobs in general seem to be extremely rare compared to frontend JS and backend Rails, which I found disappointing several years ago. But python jobs do exist, and the author should find no trouble landing one with "Cloned Redis in 230 lines" as a bullet point. :)

user5994461 6y ago
Jobs these days are just sending you back an automated coding test on HackerRank/Codility after you apply, so finding a job has a lot to do with having some programming skills. There's quite a bit of python jobs coming up in the past few years, if we're talking about US tech hubs. Location is everything.

damnencryption 6y ago

Others have already given possible reasons, another might be that they don't want to accept certain jobs or opportunities and are overly selective. They may not want to work yet but are adding any offers to the pile to negotiate better later. I know a similar person who is good with designing distributed systems and programming in general. They had a offer from facebook but declined. They want to get a good paying cybersec job but alas there aren't any at good companies. Currently working on gigs and being broke.

danielscrubs 6y ago

I’d rather take the humble exploratory academic than a cocky programmer. Just as an example he writes: “ Unfortunately many programmers, due to their lack of experience, of some knowledge of computer architecture(s), or of an in-depth understanding of the task they are given, spend countless hours by making life harder for themselves in the name of marginal performance gains, often trading many other conveniences (such as type safety, garbage collection, etc) too.” And then he himself doesn’t use type safety making the text very superfluous. As others have brought up he then uses pythonwrappers for the heavy lifting. It’s just a very shallow thought process that you are supposed to hammer out in the university. Modify the README to just say: I wanted to scratch an itch so I built PoC for a Redis alternative, and it would have been an amazing achievement. Now? Not so much.

boramalper 6y ago
I am sorry to see that you presume I am a cocky programmer. :) > And then he himself doesn’t use type safety making the text very superfluous. You are partially right, in that I did not use type annotations thoroughly in my code. Though what I had in mind was that there are much "better" languages out there (compared to C) with strong static/gradual type systems. > As others have brought up he then uses pythonwrappers for the heavy lifting. Indeed, and you can read my answer to that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25101200 > It’s just a very shallow thought process that you are supposed to hammer out in the university. If you specify what you refer to by "it", I would be happy to respond but it feels more like a personal attack now.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
> it would have been an amazing achievement 250 lines of Python code wrapping C libs is an amazing achievement..? This is so small I wouldn't even classify it as a project personally.
- boramalper 6y ago
  Author here: I am not arguing that this is an amazing achievement, but I think you are being overly dismissive here, which I find unfair, and think you are missing the point: It is 250 lines because I was experienced enough to implement it in 250 lines. Again, it's a small proof-of-concept, but the concepts employed there aren't necessarily beginner level: 1. Asynchronous I/O using `asyncio.Protocol`. 2. Sans I/O networking, see https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/ https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/ . 3. Python performance optimisations (e.g. knowing where to choose `collections.deque` over `list`) 4. Knowledge of the modern Python ecosystem (e.g. using uvloop to for event loop).

boramalper 6y ago

Author here, I have recently been offered a job at Stripe, but did not update my bio. Thank you for your kind words!

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 6y ago

>Or are college graduates these days trained to a level where this type of project is expected Well, I would be unpleasantly surprised if wrapping python's dicts with a simple API was beyond the capabilities of an average college grad.