The Big Programming Thread - Page 888

On June 09 2017 15:33 Acrofales wrote:

Definitely a big don't do this. It'll work in Python as long as you don't use a reserved word, because of scoping, but it's horrific coding practice.

On June 09 2017 15:57 dsyxelic wrote:
would cs algorithm/problem discussion go in the math thread?

say.. for example leetcode/interview-esque problems

asking for the future since I feel like there is programming thread -> math thread with a missing 'CS thread' in the middle which would better suit that

On June 09 2017 16:34 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

That's what I thought, even though these are just examples it's kind of not leaving a good impression on me as to quality of this course.

On June 09 2017 16:34 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

That's what I thought, even though these are just examples it's kind of not leaving a good impression on me as to quality of this course.

On June 09 2017 15:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
OK, I've gotta ask because it's driving me a little insane:
I'm taking a python course @ edx (python for data science to be specific), and the instructor keeps creating variables named after built in functions (for example: list = [1,2,3], or sorted = np.array(unsorted)).

.... I thought this was a very basic "don't do this" thing? Or am I wrong and it's not a big deal at all?

On June 10 2017 06:36 Blisse wrote:


If code's on slides, it doesn't matter -- they're just examples, meant to be illustrative instead of proper. If it's code given to you, eh, gross.

On June 10 2017 03:23 Thaniri wrote:


I haven't enjoyed online programming courses in the past. I taught myself better by getting a textbook and working through it. Something like Intro To Java Programming Comprehensive Version by Liang. Each chapter is like 5-10 minutes to read and provides sample problems to work through.

On June 11 2017 22:24 BrTarolg wrote:
Hi!

I just completely learn python the hard way (except for the bits about creating web-pages)

And now im here haha. I wrote a blackjack simulator and tictactoe with some unit tests. Hoping to enter to do a masters in CS so i can do a career swap

On June 12 2017 03:12 Manit0u wrote:


I did career swap without any kind of degree in CS (all I have is bachelor's in Sociology and I've been following a successful programming career for the past 4 years with steadily increasing gains and positions). Just so you know, unless you're working with something that's very close to the "sciency" part of the CS you probably won't use 90% of what you learn there in a real work (especially not the way they teach you to program). I have a friend who has a PhD in CS (specializing in distributed systems and parallel computing), he switched from academic work to regular programming and his opinion is that he was living in the dark for all those years and even programmers just above junior position were better than him in the beginning.

There's plenty of people in my company (myself included) who'd love to get a degree in cognitivistics but unfortunately they don't offer weekend or evening classes so you can't really do that and work at the same time. Philosophy is actually super useful in programming since they teach you plenty of logic and abstractions in there.

On June 12 2017 05:47 BrTarolg wrote:
I'm gonna do a 1 year masters, it seemed like a good idea and i don't mind learning some theoretical stuff, might be useful one day with a finance+maths background but who knows

What's cs50 edx?

On June 12 2017 06:36 Fwmeh wrote:


I would actually strongly disagree. I would estimate that I have had use of roughly 80% of what I learned at university, either directly or indirectly. Looking back, I realize just how good our initial programming courses were.

That said, there were some very huge gaps, at least with the courses I took, most obviously:

1) How to work in larger, collaborative code-bases over a long period of time.

2) How to work effectively with requirements in a non-trivial business domain

3) How to manage legacy code/systems.

But the reason I would prefer to hire people with degrees over those without is simple that a degree is at least some hint (however imperfect) that I'm dealing with someone capable of learning. Hopefully fast, and hopefully reasonably sophisticated things. The most valuable thing (to me) in a potential hire would be a desire to always improve and learn new things.

On June 12 2017 10:10 Manit0u wrote:


It all depends on your uni (obviously, some have better courses than others). I just don't think it's a huge requirement or anything and way too many people think that if they get their CS degree they'll instantly become programmers (you wouldn't believe how many people apply for a job in my company only to learn they can't solve the most basic interview question). I even though about getting an engineer degree but when I solved some of the problems my friend needed help with (he was doing it at the time) I realized that it would just be a waste of every second weekend for the next 3 years just to get the paper. They give people some weird problems and after they get their degree they can't solve basically the only problem we give at interviews:

Write a function (any language, can be pseudocode, doesn't have to be optimal) that gets a string as a parameter and returns first unique letter in it (or return '?' if no unique letter is found).

Every single candidate is posed with this problem. It's not super trivial, but it doesn't require knowing anything past the absolute basics and some thinking. We do 5-10 interviews each week and we hired 3 people over past 4 months (and we need like 20 more). Most candidates fail on the above problem.

On June 12 2017 11:13 Blisse wrote:
How do these candidates even get through your resume and phone screens?