3 ms·

Having the details and characteristics of the b-trees(among other things) in memory allows you to consider them as possible solutions to a problem you are facin

by lifty 14y ago

Having the details and characteristics of the b-trees(among other things) in memory allows you to consider them as possible solutions to a problem you are facing. If you dont know the details you would probably not know they are a good fit for a particular problem. The more detailed knowledge you have in your memory the bigger your possible solution set will be, thus, you will have a better chance at solving a particular problem. I think Google is not looking for people that can follow specs(although thats valuable also) but people that can come up with brilliant solutions to hard problems.

meric 14y ago
I would think a person who can specialise, learn and memorise the details and characteristics of a particular domain quickly, say b-trees, when he is working on relevant problem, would be more important than knowing about all things computer science related at the same, and lesser, detail. Wouldn't it be more important to have people to come up with brilliant solutions on problems they are working on, rather than hard problems in general that have already been solved?
- venomsnake 14y ago
  As always in our field it is somewhere in the middle - having knowledge of the platform and the field is something that can give you some hints in advance about potential problems with the approach for a difficult problem. After all a timely - "This is not going to work well because there will be lots of branch mispredictions and you will be going out of the L3 cache a lot, and RAM is terribly slow" can save a lot of time and effort for some classes of tasks that big scalabiliy companies have to deal often.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  >Wouldn't it be more important to have people to come up with brilliant solutions on problems they are working on, rather than hard problems in general that have already been solved? Most of the times the guys that can come with "brilliant solutions" on new problems are those that know the solved problems inside and out. The other guys just keep reinventing the wheel (only worse).
- Scene_Cast2 14y ago
  Typically, one doesn't know that a problem is in a specific implementation domain (b-trees) unless one knows that domain. For example, I have M time slots and N people that need to be scheduled. Each of the N people has a time schedule for the M slots (either free or busy). If a person doesn't know about bipartite graph matching (or even graphs at all), then they're less likely to come up with a polynomial-runtime solution. Now, if a person knows about bipartite matching, they might as well learn the algorithms (max flow, etc) to solve it (even for fun, at least I know I would).

by lifty 14y ago

meric 14y ago

I would think a person who can specialise, learn and memorise the details and characteristics of a particular domain quickly, say b-trees, when he is working on relevant problem, would be more important than knowing about all things computer science related at the same, and lesser, detail. Wouldn't it be more important to have people to come up with brilliant solutions on problems they are working on, rather than hard problems in general that have already been solved?

venomsnake 14y ago
As always in our field it is somewhere in the middle - having knowledge of the platform and the field is something that can give you some hints in advance about potential problems with the approach for a difficult problem. After all a timely - "This is not going to work well because there will be lots of branch mispredictions and you will be going out of the L3 cache a lot, and RAM is terribly slow" can save a lot of time and effort for some classes of tasks that big scalabiliy companies have to deal often.
pretoriusB 14y ago
>Wouldn't it be more important to have people to come up with brilliant solutions on problems they are working on, rather than hard problems in general that have already been solved? Most of the times the guys that can come with "brilliant solutions" on new problems are those that know the solved problems inside and out. The other guys just keep reinventing the wheel (only worse).
Scene_Cast2 14y ago
Typically, one doesn't know that a problem is in a specific implementation domain (b-trees) unless one knows that domain. For example, I have M time slots and N people that need to be scheduled. Each of the N people has a time schedule for the M slots (either free or busy). If a person doesn't know about bipartite graph matching (or even graphs at all), then they're less likely to come up with a polynomial-runtime solution. Now, if a person knows about bipartite matching, they might as well learn the algorithms (max flow, etc) to solve it (even for fun, at least I know I would).