IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
8,041
20,299
wormie said:
A lot of CS degrees have that math in it. And then you get to do nothing with it.
Click to expand...
Our professor explained that, at one time in the past, they didn't pair advanced math with computer science and it resulted in people who sucked at their job. The implication is, if you can't do calculus then you have no business pursuing a computer science degree.
 
Last edited:
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,005
714
Discrete mathematics are definitely important to computer science. A lot of people really enjoy lambda calculus and it's CS derivatives (anonymous functions and all that) but I don't see it getting used much in the professional world. Maybe in R&D departments. I have a lowly CIS degree so I took calculus and algorithms and that's about it from what I recall.
 
Lendarios

Lendarios

Trump's Staff
<Gold Donor>
19,360
-17,424
Coding is not rocket science, but also it is not a trivial thing to do. I'm OK with CS requiring a certain high level math.
 
Khane

Khane

Got something right about marriage
20,749
14,530
Unless you are coding specifically for mathematical or scientific systems I would argue that code is more art than science. CS degrees are not IS degrees, even though both focus around software development.
 
wormie

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,969
I hear Haskell is popular for blockchain and you need mathematical maturity to do well with Haskell.
 
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,005
714
Software development is a huge space too. The dudes plugging away on LOB C# applications probably aren't making much use of their CS degrees (if they have them). Where as those working on device drivers or proprietary algorithms probably make a bit more use of it. Until quantum computing changes the landscape, most of the large innovations in binary computing have generally been done. Sure there's tons of room for small improvements... just not tons of jobs that will let you do them.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
43,718
113,253
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
agripa

agripa

Molten Core Raider
605
590
TJT said:
I found myself having to write a ton of Regular Expressions this past week. Which I haven't had to do in forever.

Thought I'd share some A++ little tools I found for it.

RegexOne - Learn Regular Expressions - Lesson 1: An Introduction, and the ABCs -> Refresh your memory if needed. Takes about 30 minutes to get through and solve their practice problems if you're quick.

RegExr: Learn, Build, & Test RegEx -> Set it up with whatever sample string you have and tune it.
Click to expand...


Regex101 - online regex editor and debugger
 
  • 3Like
Reactions: 2 users
Louis

Louis

Trakanon Raider
2,836
1,105
I went interview for a devops job that was heavily coding based. I have no experience coding outside of a few college courses and have worked purely infrastructure/networking.

They asked me if I was familiar with regex. I had never even heard of it before and thought he said regedit. I was very confused as to why such a random question like that would be asked, but answered confidently that I did. About 10 minutes later they wanted me to get on the whiteboard and work a regex (I heard him correctly this time) problem. Needless to say I did not get a call back. :(
 
  • 2Worf
  • 1Like
Reactions: 2 users
TJT

TJT

Mr. Poopybutthole
<Gold Donor>
43,718
113,253
daly said:
I went interview for a devops job that was heavily coding based. I have no experience coding outside of a few college courses and have worked purely infrastructure/networking.

They asked me if I was familiar with regex. I had never even heard of it before and thought he said regedit. I was very confused as to why such a random question like that would be asked, but answered confidently that I did. About 10 minutes later they wanted me to get on the whiteboard and work a regex (I heard him correctly this time) problem. Needless to say I did not get a call back. :(
Click to expand...

They aren't too hard. Follow that simple Regexone site I linked above and you can become competent in them in no time. Might kick yourself in a teeth a bit with how easy they actually are. I am by no means an expert, but I can crank them when need be. I usually use them to capture stuff out of massive JSON objects from network responses. Because they are very effective when you need to capture a bunch of stuff out of them, rather than a few specific values.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,005
714
After 26 months finally got that TS/SCI renewed. Feels good that I can bail if needed when my contract is rebid in January.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users
Mist

Mist

REEEEeyore
<Rickshaw Potatoes>
31,793
24,460
daly said:
I went interview for a devops job that was heavily coding based. I have no experience coding outside of a few college courses and have worked purely infrastructure/networking.

They asked me if I was familiar with regex. I had never even heard of it before and thought he said regedit. I was very confused as to why such a random question like that would be asked, but answered confidently that I did. About 10 minutes later they wanted me to get on the whiteboard and work a regex (I heard him correctly this time) problem. Needless to say I did not get a call back. :(
Click to expand...
It's definitely something you need to learn in IT. You can't even get away from them in telecoms. SIP route patterns/digit analysis/manipulations are all done using regular expressions in all modern Avaya, Skype and Cisco platforms.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Noodleface

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
38,507
16,490
daly said:
I went interview for a devops job that was heavily coding based. I have no experience coding outside of a few college courses and have worked purely infrastructure/networking.

They asked me if I was familiar with regex. I had never even heard of it before and thought he said regedit. I was very confused as to why such a random question like that would be asked, but answered confidently that I did. About 10 minutes later they wanted me to get on the whiteboard and work a regex (I heard him correctly this time) problem. Needless to say I did not get a call back. :(
Click to expand...
Regex is powerful but what kind of backwards ass interview makes you whiteboard a regex?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users
Noodleface

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
38,507
16,490
I already hate whiteboarding interviews as it is but that stuff makes me angry. Like that interview I had where the guy wanted me to unravel a for loop and explain what the compiler would see. Well... What compiler?????
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,005
714
I don't think unraveling a for loop is a terrible question to see if someone grasps the logic behind it. I've unfortunately worked with a lot of people who've got 10-20 years of experience as "engineers" but somehow don't really understand shit about computers. They know how to build things one way and rebuild it if it breaks.
 
alavaz

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
2,005
714
Well trick questions are pretty stupid. I also hate it when people ask you what you think is the best way to do X, and the whole time you are trying to say how you would do it they interject with questions and try to lead you down the path of how they would they would do it.

That's actually just a pet peeve of mine in general and seems to happen a lot in this line of work. Some manager or another will tell me to accomplish X and then nitpick my methodology the whole time and suggest I do it their (usually antiquated or misguided) way.
 
ShakyJake

ShakyJake

<Donor>
8,041
20,299
alavaz said:
That's actually just a pet peeve of mine in general and seems to happen a lot in this line of work. Some manager or another will tell me to accomplish X and then nitpick my methodology the whole time and suggest I do it their (usually antiquated or misguided) way.
Click to expand...

Sort of related, but a pet peeve of mine is people developing their own custom solution to a problem before researching said problem to find what the common approach is. There is rarely anything we do that hasn't been done before, so don't re-invent the wheel.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.