News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by kofejnik on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @03:06PM (#21327390)
strongly disagree

1. you _won't_ be happier running a fast food joint - the work is gruelling, and it's so easy to go bust. And you won't bring home six figures

2a. people who _actually_ can code are scarce, even in the tech industry. Source: conducted over 300 interviews

2b. quite logically, your coding skill will be most appreciated and compensated at a Big Tech Co, not at a government department where they will be simply unable to see the difference

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by jason0597 on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @05:16PM (#21328574)
>2a. people who _actually_ can code are scarce, even in the tech industry. Source: conducted over 300 interviews

As a young person with an interest in software programming (currently studying chemical engineering but still write C code now and then), what do you look for when trying to find out people who can _actually_ code?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @07:55PM (#21329708)
Literally the ability to write working code. You'd be amazed how few interviewees can even put together a working for... loop.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by andrewnc on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @09:06PM (#21330096)
This absolutely blows my mind. I have a hard time even believing it. But having never conducted interviews, I just don't know.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by jason0597 on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:41PM (#21336370)
I've heard this story before, but it sounds absolutely insane and I can't begin to imagine (let alone expect!) that such a thing occurs. Is it really true?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by kofejnik on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @08:07PM (#21329775)
yes, exactly this
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on? by kofejnik on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @05:16AM (#21332739)
a somewhat serious answer: simple things should be easy to you, and hard things possible

examples of simple things: DFS/BFS walks; simple Project Euler problems; or "write a simple game in terminal, maybe with some form of minimax search" (a bit harder), or maybe a parser for simple arithmetic expressions

[ Parent | on HN ]