4 ms·

There are things from a formal CS background I wish more people mastered. Things like understanding how JOINs work, basics of memory management and understandin

by Wilya 13y ago

There are things from a formal CS background I wish more people mastered. Things like understanding how JOINs work, basics of memory management and understanding that two nested for loops is likely to be worse than a single one, even in the cloud. But knowing how to implement a specific sort isn't one of these. It's simply never come up outside of an exam.

gtz58 13y ago
I think that's kind of the point. If radical is looking for (3), they will probably know the information because it is interesting.
14113 13y ago
I'm shocked that a proper CS course wouldn't teach them. We covered Joins (and the relational maths behind them) in first year, and "nested for loops being bad" would be a necessary by-product of learning anything about complexity.
- Wilya 13y ago
  Oh, I don't mean to say these aren't taught (though being taught something and mastering it isn't quite the same). What I mean is that those are the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life, and that I would expect from candidates I interview. To be opposed to knowledge/implementation of different types of sorts, which is also a part of a CS background, but has low practical use in my everyday coding.
  - 14113 13y ago
    mm, I agree with you there. I guess it's because sorts come up so much in a CS curriculum that they're considered to be magnificently important. In other words, they're just really handy bodies for imparting central ideas (like complexity), and people mix up the messenger with the message.
  - cbhl 13y ago
    > the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life Someone fresh out of school would have no idea how to discern that from anything else in the wide, wide world of CS unless they have experience working in the industry (from, say, a summer internship or co-op terms). Hell, mastery of basic DVCS operations (say, git pull, git commit, git merge, although equivalent experience with hg, perforce, or TFS would be reasonable) isn't a guarantee, even if students spent four months in a lab "using" such a tool. The people who "do best" in university get told by their professors to become graduate students. Most are not optimized to teach the skills you seek -- if you picked a random fresh graduate and they happened to have those skills, it's probable that either they taught themselves or they learned them at another employer.

by Wilya 13y ago

gtz58 13y ago

I think that's kind of the point. If radical is looking for (3), they will probably know the information because it is interesting.

14113 13y ago

I'm shocked that a proper CS course wouldn't teach them. We covered Joins (and the relational maths behind them) in first year, and "nested for loops being bad" would be a necessary by-product of learning anything about complexity.

Wilya 13y ago
Oh, I don't mean to say these aren't taught (though being taught something and mastering it isn't quite the same). What I mean is that those are the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life, and that I would expect from candidates I interview. To be opposed to knowledge/implementation of different types of sorts, which is also a part of a CS background, but has low practical use in my everyday coding.
- 14113 13y ago
  mm, I agree with you there. I guess it's because sorts come up so much in a CS curriculum that they're considered to be magnificently important. In other words, they're just really handy bodies for imparting central ideas (like complexity), and people mix up the messenger with the message.
- cbhl 13y ago
  > the parts of a CS background that have actually been useful in my everyday coding life Someone fresh out of school would have no idea how to discern that from anything else in the wide, wide world of CS unless they have experience working in the industry (from, say, a summer internship or co-op terms). Hell, mastery of basic DVCS operations (say, git pull, git commit, git merge, although equivalent experience with hg, perforce, or TFS would be reasonable) isn't a guarantee, even if students spent four months in a lab "using" such a tool. The people who "do best" in university get told by their professors to become graduate students. Most are not optimized to teach the skills you seek -- if you picked a random fresh graduate and they happened to have those skills, it's probable that either they taught themselves or they learned them at another employer.