Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search

Re:Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search by recursive on Wednesday March 19, 2014 @07:37PM (#7432669)

Yes, you just demonstrated an example of a case where a developer is not hurt by not understanding algorithms or runtime complexity.

Here's one where they are: In python, the in operator works on both lists and sets. For one, large numbers of elements will perform very quickly. For the other, it will perform very slowly. If a developer doesn't understand how they work, and where it's appropriate to use each, they can still do something completely terrible without even straying away from basic APIs.

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Re:Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search by rhizome on Wednesday March 19, 2014 @08:00PM (#7432797)

While it seems like you're moving goalposts, this example also appears to be something a person could know without touching on nested loops or O(n) at all.

Case in point, 10s of Googling produced this link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2831212/python-sets-vs-li... ...and I don't even use Python yet.

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Re:Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search by recursive on Wednesday March 19, 2014 @10:09PM (#7433394)

Is it possible to write working code without understanding O()? Definitely.

Is it helpful to understand? Definitely.

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Re:Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search by rhizome on Wednesday March 19, 2014 @11:13PM (#7433583)

Of course, but neither was your point. You were rebutting that algo & bintree knowledge are unnecessary in the vast majority of companies, in favor of the pursuit of O(n) knowledge in candidates. None of your examples validated this, and "should" became merely "helpful."

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Re:Lessons from a Silicon Valley job search by recursive on Thursday March 20, 2014 @02:21AM (#7434177)

I suppose I considered it reasonable to consider things that are helpful should be done.

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