Re:The software development final exam: Mathematics
by cperciva on Wednesday October 10, 2012 @08:24PM
(#4638819)
I'm not particularly surprised. The mathematics here is generally pretty basic material which other things build on top of -- and as you say, your crypto background helps with those questions.
I don't remember seeing any emails from you... did you submit your answers?
Re:The software development final exam: Mathematics
by tptacek on Wednesday October 10, 2012 @08:29PM
(#4638837)
Of course not. :)
Re:The software development final exam: Mathematics
by nitrogen on Wednesday October 10, 2012 @11:57PM
(#4639302)
In light of this (and the fact that many others are doing the same), I don't think you can interpret your results as being truly representative of the industry, cpercival, though I do look forward to reading your final summary.
I have never needed to know the specifics of MESI cache coherence (I've benefited from knowing about cache coherence, but not in fine detail), and the problems I've worked on professionally have lent themselves better to commit protocols than to pthreads synchronization.
On the other hand, I do a lot of crypto pentesting, so hashes versus MACs, RSA padding, and basic stat are straightforward.
I don't have Colin's academic background but if I was him I'd be disquieted by the fact that someone like me comes out OK on his math and less well on his arch/OS stuff.