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The purpose of asking this question is to find whether the person who answers understands the subject matter well enough to reason about it and arrive at the co

by 10098 14y ago

The purpose of asking this question is to find whether the person who answers understands the subject matter well enough to reason about it and arrive at the correct answer. It doesn't even matter if insert is a typical use case or not; if the candidate knows data structures he won't even think about it. And what's with the name-calling? Aren't you capable of having a normal, polite discussion?

anthonyb 14y ago
I know lots of really good programmers who wouldn't necessarily be able to describe the details of linked list algorithms or malloc. They're doing high level stuff with numpy/scipy, or working on web frameworks, and whether they know malloc or not is irrelevant. You keep talking about "the subject matter" and "programming" like it's one topic. It's not, hence the "you're an ass" comment - you're just repeating your argument ad nauseam and ignoring everything everyone else has to say. It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.
- 10098 14y ago
  > * It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.* It looks like our definitions of "good" and "programmer" are somewhat different.
  - anthonyb 14y ago
    People used to make similar arguments in favour of assembly language, ie. you can't be a programmer unless you can drill down to the bare metal and make it do backflips/squeeze every last bit of performance out. Now computers are faster, compilers are smarter at optimising and it's only really the case if you're doing hardcore kernel programming or writing a game engine. C, pointers and linked lists are going the same way as computers get faster still: they're not very relevant unless you're coding something in a specific niche. And I've seen people who were the opposite of what you're saying - people who knew lots about low level C/Assembly stuff, but who couldn't write clean, maintainable high level code to save their life. But to get back on the original topic - none of that is relevant to learning how to program. Loops, variables, data structures, managing state, functions and classes are more what you want to teach to start with, and are far more relevant to most programmers than malloc or linked lists.

by 10098 14y ago

anthonyb 14y ago

I know lots of really good programmers who wouldn't necessarily be able to describe the details of linked list algorithms or malloc. They're doing high level stuff with numpy/scipy, or working on web frameworks, and whether they know malloc or not is irrelevant. You keep talking about "the subject matter" and "programming" like it's one topic. It's not, hence the "you're an ass" comment - you're just repeating your argument ad nauseam and ignoring everything everyone else has to say. It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.

10098 14y ago
> * It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.* It looks like our definitions of "good" and "programmer" are somewhat different.
- anthonyb 14y ago
  People used to make similar arguments in favour of assembly language, ie. you can't be a programmer unless you can drill down to the bare metal and make it do backflips/squeeze every last bit of performance out. Now computers are faster, compilers are smarter at optimising and it's only really the case if you're doing hardcore kernel programming or writing a game engine. C, pointers and linked lists are going the same way as computers get faster still: they're not very relevant unless you're coding something in a specific niche. And I've seen people who were the opposite of what you're saying - people who knew lots about low level C/Assembly stuff, but who couldn't write clean, maintainable high level code to save their life. But to get back on the original topic - none of that is relevant to learning how to program. Loops, variables, data structures, managing state, functions and classes are more what you want to teach to start with, and are far more relevant to most programmers than malloc or linked lists.