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The content taught here is the highest payout thing you can learn, in my opinion. Certainly more important than actually writing code or learning algos. What t

by dfee 4y ago

The content taught here is the highest payout thing you can learn, in my opinion. Certainly more important than actually writing code or learning algos. What this content covers should unlock iteration speed, which is the single greatest lever in learning and growing faster (on a computer). Thus it gives you more cycles to go back to improving your code, experimenting with algos, etc. Probably also highly correlated with upwards mobility in the software job market. Great seeing this under a common umbrella I can hand to students and new grads.

whateveracct 4y ago
I went to Purdue over a decade ago and we had a 1 credit hour lab that taught this stuff. Unix command line, git, bash, and finally some python. Like you said, it's been a complete game changer. I feel these skills continue to differentiate me from my peers in terms of how I can attack arbitrary problems bravely to this day.
- animal_spirits 4y ago
  They still teach this stuff at Purdue. I graduated a few years ago and by far the most important class was about how unix works, moving around the command line and finally introducing us to vim
  - tyhoff 4y ago
    <3 Me and a few others created this course in 2014. Glad you found it useful! I got so much joy out of the content creating the content for the lectures and labs.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago
I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.
- theonething 4y ago
  A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
  - alfiedotwtf 4y ago
    I read a long time ago, that either Kernighan or Ritchie said they never use a debugger and just sprinkle printf() statements.
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      Concluding that using printf to debug is superior to using a debugger would be a mistake! I’ve been programming in C for nearly 20 years and primarily used printf for debugging for the first 12-15 years, and have used debuggers more and more. I use Emacs, and its gud mode is so nicely integrated into everything that using gdb is truly much, much faster than the alternative. I don’t use print debugging at all anymore. It takes less time and cognitive overhead to just stop the program on the same line you would have inserted your printf, but you can now inspect the entire program state. Obviously I’m not saying anything revelatory if you use an IDE on a regular basis… I guess this comment is for the folks who eschew IDEs.
    - wojciii 4y ago
      This works well mostly and I use this. I usually implement a logging system where I can enable/disable individual components but use a debugger to examine functions which are not behaving as intended.. or core dumps. Usually in connection with an unit test that fails or started failing caused by my changes to the codebase that I'm working on. Logging alone is fine, but it can often be difficult not to drown in information. I do embedded programming in C mostly.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    Maybe rare but you may be very skilled at understanding structure and finding solution but knowing nothing about tools. As long as you're either one of them.
  - 4y ago
lordnacho 4y ago
I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. I looked over her shoulder as my wife was doing a CS degree, and I realised there's a bunch of these little things that make life a lot easier if you know them.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  And in non-English countries, well, knowing English long before uni helps a fuck ton.
- joenot443 4y ago
  In my class 5 years ago, the differentiating factor was whether the kids who grew up online or not. Students like myself or my roommate who’d spent their formative years in front of a computer, not because they had to, but because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I never realized how much I was learning during the time I spent scripting RuneScape bots and writing toy “viruses”, I did it because it was more fun.
  - ccity88 4y ago
    I got my start writing RuneScape bots too! It's such a shame because speaking to the younger generation (I call them the TikTok generation) they don't have the same experience with the web the way we did. For them, the internet is closed off, a few big websites like Facebook, youtube, twitter. They use their phones primarily to access the web, and a laptop is exclusively used for school work; "A PC? Why would I need that when I can game on my XBox/PS5??". The internet really did change so much in the last decade, and in my honest experience computer literacy has gone down not up as we've all expected
- rejectfinite 4y ago
  >Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS
agumonkey 4y ago
Not sure if that fits, but it reminds me of Gary Bernhardts "Unix Chainsaw" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQnyApKysg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQnyApKysg4 It's all about leveraging "simple" cli tools and combine their powers to cut through work very swiftly. The opposite of many days for many people.
tkiolp4 4y ago
Indeed. While I think learning algorithms and ds is a non-negotiable thing, in 90% of the companies out there in 90% of the situations one will never have to write a binary search from scratch or implement a queue from scratch. On the other hand, profiling, debugging, glueing things together via bash, etc., that’s what distinguishes you from the colleges who only write passable code.
- starkd 4y ago
  But writing implementing some of those basic data structures is some of the funnest things to do in uni.
- Encrust6221 4y ago
  I dropped out after a year of college and have since weaseled my way into a dev position, your observation could not be more true in my experience. I've since strongly considered going back to school for a degree, but as interesting and probably useful some of the material may be, I'm not convinced it's worth it as an investment into making me better at my job. If only I could use 529 funds on some of these online course providers.

by dfee 4y ago

whateveracct 4y ago

I went to Purdue over a decade ago and we had a 1 credit hour lab that taught this stuff. Unix command line, git, bash, and finally some python. Like you said, it's been a complete game changer. I feel these skills continue to differentiate me from my peers in terms of how I can attack arbitrary problems bravely to this day.

animal_spirits 4y ago
They still teach this stuff at Purdue. I graduated a few years ago and by far the most important class was about how unix works, moving around the command line and finally introducing us to vim
- tyhoff 4y ago
  <3 Me and a few others created this course in 2014. Glad you found it useful! I got so much joy out of the content creating the content for the lectures and labs.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y ago

I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.

theonething 4y ago
A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
- alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  I read a long time ago, that either Kernighan or Ritchie said they never use a debugger and just sprinkle printf() statements.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    Concluding that using printf to debug is superior to using a debugger would be a mistake! I’ve been programming in C for nearly 20 years and primarily used printf for debugging for the first 12-15 years, and have used debuggers more and more. I use Emacs, and its gud mode is so nicely integrated into everything that using gdb is truly much, much faster than the alternative. I don’t use print debugging at all anymore. It takes less time and cognitive overhead to just stop the program on the same line you would have inserted your printf, but you can now inspect the entire program state. Obviously I’m not saying anything revelatory if you use an IDE on a regular basis… I guess this comment is for the folks who eschew IDEs.
  - wojciii 4y ago
    This works well mostly and I use this. I usually implement a logging system where I can enable/disable individual components but use a debugger to examine functions which are not behaving as intended.. or core dumps. Usually in connection with an unit test that fails or started failing caused by my changes to the codebase that I'm working on. Logging alone is fine, but it can often be difficult not to drown in information. I do embedded programming in C mostly.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Maybe rare but you may be very skilled at understanding structure and finding solution but knowing nothing about tools. As long as you're either one of them.
- 4y ago

lordnacho 4y ago

I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. I looked over her shoulder as my wife was doing a CS degree, and I realised there's a bunch of these little things that make life a lot easier if you know them.

xwolfi 4y ago
And in non-English countries, well, knowing English long before uni helps a fuck ton.
joenot443 4y ago
In my class 5 years ago, the differentiating factor was whether the kids who grew up online or not. Students like myself or my roommate who’d spent their formative years in front of a computer, not because they had to, but because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I never realized how much I was learning during the time I spent scripting RuneScape bots and writing toy “viruses”, I did it because it was more fun.
- ccity88 4y ago
  I got my start writing RuneScape bots too! It's such a shame because speaking to the younger generation (I call them the TikTok generation) they don't have the same experience with the web the way we did. For them, the internet is closed off, a few big websites like Facebook, youtube, twitter. They use their phones primarily to access the web, and a laptop is exclusively used for school work; "A PC? Why would I need that when I can game on my XBox/PS5??". The internet really did change so much in the last decade, and in my honest experience computer literacy has gone down not up as we've all expected
rejectfinite 4y ago
>Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS

agumonkey 4y ago

Not sure if that fits, but it reminds me of Gary Bernhardts "Unix Chainsaw" talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQnyApKysg4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQnyApKysg4 It's all about leveraging "simple" cli tools and combine their powers to cut through work very swiftly. The opposite of many days for many people.

tkiolp4 4y ago

Indeed. While I think learning algorithms and ds is a non-negotiable thing, in 90% of the companies out there in 90% of the situations one will never have to write a binary search from scratch or implement a queue from scratch. On the other hand, profiling, debugging, glueing things together via bash, etc., that’s what distinguishes you from the colleges who only write passable code.

starkd 4y ago
But writing implementing some of those basic data structures is some of the funnest things to do in uni.
Encrust6221 4y ago
I dropped out after a year of college and have since weaseled my way into a dev position, your observation could not be more true in my experience. I've since strongly considered going back to school for a degree, but as interesting and probably useful some of the material may be, I'm not convinced it's worth it as an investment into making me better at my job. If only I could use 529 funds on some of these online course providers.