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A comment on Visual explanation of the last Google Codejam 2017 question. Parent comment

Re:Visual explanation of the last Google Codejam 2017 question by ovi256 on Sunday April 09, 2017 @12:56PM (#14073172)
This is about hitting the high notes, as Joel Spolsky put it in his [post].

A lot of people are good software engineers and can wrote good software. To get Jeff Deans that write revolutionary software, we don't yet have a better method than training people in these abstract, very hard problems, making them compete and hoping for the best.

As much as we software engineers / computer scientists believe we are special snowflakes, this exact same method is applied to most STEM PhD to professor tracks, mathematics, classic music instrument players, [athletes], and what have you.

[post] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-n...

[athletes] http://rittersp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Chambliss-Mun...

[musicians] http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/Deliber...

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Re:Visual explanation of the last Google Codejam 2017 question by patrickmn on Sunday April 09, 2017 @01:46PM (#14073433)
And, of course, being good at coding competitions doesn't mean that you're necessarily a good software engineer. The Jeff Deans are rare. "Hoping for the best" is pretty accurate.
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