3 ms·

> The only people to ever write a merge sort are either in/preparing for an interview, and John von Neumann. Do you mean "for the first time and without errors

by Zababa 5y ago

> The only people to ever write a merge sort are either in/preparing for an interview, and John von Neumann. Do you mean "for the first time and without errors"? I assume that most people should be able to give an overview of how a merge-sort works, and a pseudocode implementation.

brailsafe 5y ago
Why? It's really only in those contexts that's it's necessary to have it on hand. Unless you're in the context of needing it on-hand, it's trivia.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I wouldn't call it "trivia" but "fundamental knowledge". If the person you're interviewing went through college it should be easy. If they didn't, they probably read about it somewhere (or should have) and can describe it to you.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    It's not as much a question to me of whether they've ever seen it, wrote it, or studied it, it's whether they know off the top of their head even which one it is or what the implementation looks like.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > I wouldn't call it "trivia" but "fundamental knowledge". Something that will never be needed in a career can hardly be called "fundamental knowledge". I don't remember anything about how merge sort works. If someone wanted to interview me on that, they'd convince themselves I can't code, despite decades of delivering production code. > If the person you're interviewing went through college it should be easy. I did study CS in university. A very top CS school, even (CMU). Probably I must've studied merge sort at some point, but the last algorithms class I took at CMU was almost 30 years ago. Not once have I needed that info since then, so it's long long forgotten. Its relevance to a software engineering career is nil.
the_only_law 5y ago
> Do you mean "for the first time and without errors"? I assume that most people should be able to give an overview of how a merge-sort works, and a pseudocode implementation. That’s fine if it’s relevant to the role. But my understanding is that a lot of those interviews, especially at the higher companies require you to get it right, quickly, without issue, under interview pressure. And if you don’t you probably won’t make it past that stage. Also don’t bother trying that stuff for typical CRUD roles at corps that won’t ever require anything those sort of skills, and yes that’s likely. I’ve been in environments where even if strong CS fundamentals could improve the product they won’t let you because it’s not a priority.

by Zababa 5y ago

brailsafe 5y ago

Why? It's really only in those contexts that's it's necessary to have it on hand. Unless you're in the context of needing it on-hand, it's trivia.

Zababa 5y ago
I wouldn't call it "trivia" but "fundamental knowledge". If the person you're interviewing went through college it should be easy. If they didn't, they probably read about it somewhere (or should have) and can describe it to you.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  It's not as much a question to me of whether they've ever seen it, wrote it, or studied it, it's whether they know off the top of their head even which one it is or what the implementation looks like.
- jjav 5y ago
  > I wouldn't call it "trivia" but "fundamental knowledge". Something that will never be needed in a career can hardly be called "fundamental knowledge". I don't remember anything about how merge sort works. If someone wanted to interview me on that, they'd convince themselves I can't code, despite decades of delivering production code. > If the person you're interviewing went through college it should be easy. I did study CS in university. A very top CS school, even (CMU). Probably I must've studied merge sort at some point, but the last algorithms class I took at CMU was almost 30 years ago. Not once have I needed that info since then, so it's long long forgotten. Its relevance to a software engineering career is nil.

the_only_law 5y ago

> Do you mean "for the first time and without errors"? I assume that most people should be able to give an overview of how a merge-sort works, and a pseudocode implementation. That’s fine if it’s relevant to the role. But my understanding is that a lot of those interviews, especially at the higher companies require you to get it right, quickly, without issue, under interview pressure. And if you don’t you probably won’t make it past that stage. Also don’t bother trying that stuff for typical CRUD roles at corps that won’t ever require anything those sort of skills, and yes that’s likely. I’ve been in environments where even if strong CS fundamentals could improve the product they won’t let you because it’s not a priority.