"Reading the technical questions made me realize how crappy a programmer I am, algorithms-wise" The good news is that this is very fixable. I could answer the

"Reading the technical questions made me realize how crappy a programmer I am, algorithms-wise" The good news is that this is very fixable. I could answer the questions in the article without effort but this is a very different situation from about 3 years ago when I wouldn't have been able to answer even one of these. I really started hitting the Algorithm books(Skiena, Cormen, if anyone is interested ) about three years ago and am now comfortable with thinking "algorithmically" - at least for sequential algorithms. Studying algorithms to a fair degree of competence is very feasible even for non CS folks - I have no degree in CS and am entirely self taught. The tough part was working through proofs - As I was reading about unit tests for the answers , either in the original article or the reddit comments, I forget which - I was thinking it might be better to write down a formal proof that the algorithm works. If I face tough questions on parallel/concurrent algorithm, I'd probably take a while to answer or fail completely - I need to look into parallel/concurrent algorithms in the coming year.