6 Apr
2009
6 Apr
'09
9:10 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Paul Koning
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 1:56 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: The lost art (Was: The VAX is running
I used to ask college grads to write a function in C to convert a null-terminated
string representing an octal number into an int. My primary goal was to observe their
coding habits, but the radix-8 aspect of the problem scuttled a lot of them! What was
really sad was how many had trouble with type itself: realizing that a C int type is
nothing more than an abstraction ascribing a meaning to a bit pattern. Many couldn't
help but think of an int as a hex number - or in some cases, a decimal one.
Happily, some of them whipped through that problem and then asked me for something that
had some "chew" to it. Those were the ones I hired....
When people say there's no such thing as a stupid question, I disagree:
"Will this be on the test?"
:-) -- Ian
>>>> "Fred" == Fred Cisin
<cisin at xenosoft.com> writes:
> So, pull a programmer under 30 at random from
his desk and ask him
> to write a polyphase merge sort optimized for 8 tapes. An art may
> still be lost in practice even if there's literature around
> describing it.
Fred> I've run into "CS" graduates from the university who supposedly
Fred> have learned about really "good" sort algorithms (usually
Fred> "Shell-Metzner"), without understanding which situations an
Fred> optimized "bubble" is better for.
Fred> When presented with "write a sort for a database that is too
Fred> large to fit into memory", the only response that they can
Fred> think of is "well, get more memory."
Fred> I fired one who was unable to write a program to print 3-up
Fred> mailing labels because the printer didn't have a reverse
Fred> line-feed!
Fred> There are way too many "computer scientists" who haven't even
Fred> read Knuth. "They only assigned a few specific pages"
This is a good way to sort the ones worth hiring from those who are
not.
paul