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The author says he struggled with concepts that are “easy” or supposed to be. In my experience of coding since 6th grade and having been in the industry for qui

The author says he struggled with concepts that are “easy” or supposed to be. In my experience of coding since 6th grade and having been in the industry for quite some time, it’s difficult to say something is supposed to be “easy” or “hard”. The author doesn’t give many concrete examples so it’s possible he is just assuming certain things should be super easy… A lot of programmers I meet love to claim they don’t struggle with basics, then I ask them to write be a simple bubble sort or binary search from scratch and 90% cannot do it. They could only do it when they could reference or look it up. Everything thing seems “easy” after you learn it. There’s this romanticized super genius idea everyone thinks they need to live up to but that portrayal is simply fake. No one’s grasps things instantly.. I am a researcher at MIT. I work with arguably some of “smartest” people on the planet, and even they struggle with basic concepts from time to time, as does everyone. There is simply too much information for any single human to know it all, and learn new things instantly. It doesn’t happen…. Most things that should be “simple” or “easy” always end up requiring significant effort because we don’t truly know how to do something until it’s actually down. Forgive my spelling and grammar errors. I am typing on a phone and my hands are just too big to do it quickly.

rustybolt 3y ago
> I work with arguably some of “smartest” people on the planet, and even they struggle with basic concepts from time to time, as does everyone. There is simply too much information for any single human to know it all, and learn new things instantly. This. Many programmers, for some reason, act like skill is a complete order; you are either more skilled or less skilled than someone else. In practice you are just familiar with different things, so if somebody doesn't know something that feels trivial to you, it just means he didn't encounter it in the same way.
airstrike 3y ago
I don't think writing bubble sort from scratch without mistakes is necessarily a good demonstration of someone's ability to "handle the basics" Realistically you will never need to write it yourself unless you're coding in some very specific domains It's at most a signal for whether or not they remember algorithms 101 or some leetcode exercise, but knowing that they do remember isn't really useful to me
- strangesmells06 3y ago
  it's not even the most efficient search. I don't think any sort method in a language would use a bubble.
  - jdefr89 3y ago
    I agree it isn’t but the point I was trying to make is that when you have to do something from scratch, on your own, even if it’s simple, it can be a challenge. My example was poor because I am typing fast sitting in a car parking lot and I hate typing my thoughts on phones.. Forgive me..
    - strangesmells06 3y ago
      I was agreeing with you haha Companies ask that kind of stuff at interviews lol
- Jensson 3y ago
  > It's at most a signal for whether or not they remember algorithms 101 or some leetcode exercise, but knowing that they do remember isn't really useful to me For bubble sort? Do you really think anyone should have to remember an algorithm to write a quadratic time sort? All you have to do is "compare and swap" and loop through until you are done, this is way easier than Fizzbuzz. This is only hard if you have a hard time grasping loops, conditional comparisons or swaps. But if you understand all of those the sort writes itself. And understanding loops, comparisons and swaps is pretty fundamental to anything you do as a software engineer, so I'm not sure how any competent software engineer could struggle with it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - just_boost_it 3y ago
    Every technical thing you know is informed by your practice in an area. There's a lot of roles where you don't even have to think about which algorithm is implemented behind your favorite sort method. If you work in a role like that for 10 years, bubble sort becomes "which one was that again"? Engineering is about solving valuable problems. Solving some of those problems requires obsessive control over (and selection of) specific sorting algorithms, many do not. Edit: it's also worth bearing in mind that many of the people who discovered these algorithms are famous in part for having thought them up. If data structures and algorithms were so obvious, nobody would know who many of these people were.
patrick451 3y ago
This seems like an uninteresting test. Nobody (almost) is implementing sorting algorithms in their day job. We use libraries. It's like asking people who claim to not struggle with driving basics to change their spark plugs and saying "aha, I new you were an idiot".
- jdefr89 3y ago
  Yes but it is basic in the sense that it’s one of the first couple algorithms/data structs mostly everyone has been exposed to. Many knowing what they are and the general principle of how and why they work. That is exactly my point though.. Like what do we consider “basic” exactly? That line becomes blurry in any complex field…
  - patrick451 3y ago
    If you don't use something, you forget it. Nobody is writing these algorithms in their job. If you did, it will get flagged in code review, the same way rolling your own crypto does. Which is why I think it's unreasonable to expect people to remember how to implement them off the top of their head.
- josephg 3y ago
  It seems pretty indicative to me. Bubble sort is a simple idea that I understand conceptually but haven’t written the code for yet. That summarises most of my job. And yet, 30 years in, I still make stupid mistakes all the time. I think the difference between professional engineers and person writing the blog isn’t necessarily skill. I think it’s how we react when we make mistakes. Maybe the real test of a programmer is watching how calmly they can write their buggy bubble sort, then test it and fix the bugs. Bugs happen. How we roll with the punches is what makes some people great.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hyperthesis 3y ago
Theory: "imposter syndrome" is simply seeing the truth. No one lives up to the social conception. Einstein needed help with mathematics. The realistic perspective is the curiosity of a scientist; the humility of a mortal. Knowing the premises does not automatically imply you know all the consequences... even though it "should". Bugs have been found in production binary search. Skipping bubblesort, I think quicksort is easy to implement, if you know Hoare's fp insight (I remembered it, but had to check it was him). Making a version that is both efficient and correct may be harder for me... Similar for Boyer-Moore substring matching (I remembered their names!)
- maleldil 3y ago
  > I think quicksort is easy to implement, if you know Hoare's fp insight Could you please provide more information on this?
  - hyperthesis 3y ago
    He learnt about recursion in a fp workshop(?), and as a first exercise, tried applying it to sort. You pick a number in the list, then put lesser numbers into a left-list, and greater into a right-list. Recurse. It's very slow as intuitive, simple and elegant fp, because it's creating new lists like crazy; but a mutable, in-place version (e.g. in C) is super fast. Maybe the origin of the folklore "learn fp to be a better coder, not to code fp"? I don't think he expected it to be so good; he was just doing him. A very smart man.

rustybolt 3y ago

> I work with arguably some of “smartest” people on the planet, and even they struggle with basic concepts from time to time, as does everyone. There is simply too much information for any single human to know it all, and learn new things instantly. This. Many programmers, for some reason, act like skill is a complete order; you are either more skilled or less skilled than someone else. In practice you are just familiar with different things, so if somebody doesn't know something that feels trivial to you, it just means he didn't encounter it in the same way.

airstrike 3y ago

I don't think writing bubble sort from scratch without mistakes is necessarily a good demonstration of someone's ability to "handle the basics" Realistically you will never need to write it yourself unless you're coding in some very specific domains It's at most a signal for whether or not they remember algorithms 101 or some leetcode exercise, but knowing that they do remember isn't really useful to me

strangesmells06 3y ago
it's not even the most efficient search. I don't think any sort method in a language would use a bubble.
- jdefr89 3y ago
  I agree it isn’t but the point I was trying to make is that when you have to do something from scratch, on your own, even if it’s simple, it can be a challenge. My example was poor because I am typing fast sitting in a car parking lot and I hate typing my thoughts on phones.. Forgive me..
  - strangesmells06 3y ago
    I was agreeing with you haha Companies ask that kind of stuff at interviews lol
Jensson 3y ago
> It's at most a signal for whether or not they remember algorithms 101 or some leetcode exercise, but knowing that they do remember isn't really useful to me For bubble sort? Do you really think anyone should have to remember an algorithm to write a quadratic time sort? All you have to do is "compare and swap" and loop through until you are done, this is way easier than Fizzbuzz. This is only hard if you have a hard time grasping loops, conditional comparisons or swaps. But if you understand all of those the sort writes itself. And understanding loops, comparisons and swaps is pretty fundamental to anything you do as a software engineer, so I'm not sure how any competent software engineer could struggle with it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- just_boost_it 3y ago
  Every technical thing you know is informed by your practice in an area. There's a lot of roles where you don't even have to think about which algorithm is implemented behind your favorite sort method. If you work in a role like that for 10 years, bubble sort becomes "which one was that again"? Engineering is about solving valuable problems. Solving some of those problems requires obsessive control over (and selection of) specific sorting algorithms, many do not. Edit: it's also worth bearing in mind that many of the people who discovered these algorithms are famous in part for having thought them up. If data structures and algorithms were so obvious, nobody would know who many of these people were.

patrick451 3y ago

This seems like an uninteresting test. Nobody (almost) is implementing sorting algorithms in their day job. We use libraries. It's like asking people who claim to not struggle with driving basics to change their spark plugs and saying "aha, I new you were an idiot".

jdefr89 3y ago
Yes but it is basic in the sense that it’s one of the first couple algorithms/data structs mostly everyone has been exposed to. Many knowing what they are and the general principle of how and why they work. That is exactly my point though.. Like what do we consider “basic” exactly? That line becomes blurry in any complex field…
- patrick451 3y ago
  If you don't use something, you forget it. Nobody is writing these algorithms in their job. If you did, it will get flagged in code review, the same way rolling your own crypto does. Which is why I think it's unreasonable to expect people to remember how to implement them off the top of their head.
josephg 3y ago
It seems pretty indicative to me. Bubble sort is a simple idea that I understand conceptually but haven’t written the code for yet. That summarises most of my job. And yet, 30 years in, I still make stupid mistakes all the time. I think the difference between professional engineers and person writing the blog isn’t necessarily skill. I think it’s how we react when we make mistakes. Maybe the real test of a programmer is watching how calmly they can write their buggy bubble sort, then test it and fix the bugs. Bugs happen. How we roll with the punches is what makes some people great.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hyperthesis 3y ago

Theory: "imposter syndrome" is simply seeing the truth. No one lives up to the social conception. Einstein needed help with mathematics. The realistic perspective is the curiosity of a scientist; the humility of a mortal. Knowing the premises does not automatically imply you know all the consequences... even though it "should". Bugs have been found in production binary search. Skipping bubblesort, I think quicksort is easy to implement, if you know Hoare's fp insight (I remembered it, but had to check it was him). Making a version that is both efficient and correct may be harder for me... Similar for Boyer-Moore substring matching (I remembered their names!)

maleldil 3y ago
> I think quicksort is easy to implement, if you know Hoare's fp insight Could you please provide more information on this?
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  He learnt about recursion in a fp workshop(?), and as a first exercise, tried applying it to sort. You pick a number in the list, then put lesser numbers into a left-list, and greater into a right-list. Recurse. It's very slow as intuitive, simple and elegant fp, because it's creating new lists like crazy; but a mutable, in-place version (e.g. in C) is super fast. Maybe the origin of the folklore "learn fp to be a better coder, not to code fp"? I don't think he expected it to be so good; he was just doing him. A very smart man.