3 ms·

I'm self-taught. I also wrote the world's then-largest mail system, which eventually handled 4,000 TPS at zero downtime on servers about as powerful as my iPho

I'm self-taught. I also wrote the world's then-largest mail system, which eventually handled 4,000 TPS at zero downtime on servers about as powerful as my iPhone. I also don't know algorithms. E-mail, at the time, didn't need them - there was no search, no deduplication, no anything but "do a bunch of deterministic, bounded operations very quickly." Sure, some hash tables and plenty of linked lists, but that's about it. Am I just a big fat outlier there, condemned to cram Skiena before every interview for the rest of my life?

jchonphoenix 15y ago
You may be an outlier, or you may just not be in the group of self taught programmers that was described. As I said, most self taught programmers don't fully understand what they do. Many, however, do. I was just explaining the most common case. Judging by the fact that you were able to do many deterministic bounded operations quickly, and understand why they were bounded and why they were quick, I get the feeling that you'd do much better at an algorithm interview than you give yourself credit for. And I'd also cram CLRS before an interview :P I know I'm good at what I do compared to the avg coder, but compared to the average coder at Palantir, I have a long way to go. I'm in no way satisfied with my ability where it is today and its always smart to take a refresher before an interview.