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

I have a degree in computer engineering, so I have decent knowledge of Assembly and the related computer architecture. That said, I've been programming in Python for the last 5 years and I can't remember one time where Assembly has explicitly helped me.

Understanding what a garbage collector is doing behind the scenes and what memory management means even though Python tries its hardest to take that away from you...those have definitely been helpful.

Noodleface said:

Sure. But why assembly?

I write assembly for work, I have a computer engineering degree and I agree with it's importance. But I don't understand why we would suggest someone trying to break into the field via coding camps should spend significant time on it.

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Okay, here is a half-rant, which includes a bit of trolling, but as an exercise for the reader you need to decide yourself where I am trolling or not. Good Luck!

I said to learn it as a second language to learn how the machine down there looks at your code and works through it. Pointers and memory layout of data structures and how algorithms are working with them are one of the biggest hurdles in really understanding programming, and also one of the things where programmers regularly fuck up. The C++ guys are trying to solve this with smart pointers (which brings the problem of ownership), while other languages like Java are trying their hardest to abstract the whole concept away with the addition of a garbage collector.

We are living in a time where the hard physical limits are restricting further improvements in single core processing power. While the most modern processes are working their way to 7nm the wall is in sight. To illustrate the point: a stretch of 10nm is basically around 26 atoms of silicon. Leakage is a real fucking problem now.

So to really improve performance you need more cores, and with that comes parallel programming. In the near future you won't be able to throw more money at the problem in order to buy the newest hardware to make it go faster, you have to think about algorithms and data structures and how to parallelize your workload.

In the context of "coding camps" and breaking into the field it is at first useless, but the hard truth is that those coding camps are next to useless for your programming education, too. Sure, they teach you concepts and the language to express them in--but real programming can only be learned through programming, and the pain you feel while banging your head on your desk because your program is not working while you learn how to use your debugger. You have to put in the work. Which is true for any creative field. The 10.000 hours to mastery rule is mostly bullshit, as it is how you use the the time and the quality of your mind state. But you have to put in the work, no way around it.

"Full stack developer" is another one of those things that will most likely go away in the future, because basically you are making yourself in a "jack of all trades, master of none". Things will get more and more complicated with ubiquitous computing, and you won't be able to keep up with the latest languages and frameworks and techniques and silver bullets to be competitive. And a team of offshore people in a country where their combined monthly salary is cheaper than your rent is not doing you a favor.

On the other hand we are cruising to the next dotcom bust, when the people with money realize that the latest hype in things like Uber is basically "taxis, but with the internet" and basically an exploitation of the low income segments of your population who will fuck your company up when they realize they can retaliate. Also, the AI and deep learning stuff is mostly smoke, mirrors, and cheap offshore people doing the actual work. Then we have things like "big data":


Where was I with my rant? Ah, if you really want to learn how to program and not to "code" you have to learn on two fronts: On the one hand you have an actual problem you are trying to solve, for which you are writing the code. On the other hand you are working with the theoretical foundation and the math to look how to structure your problem, the data and which algorithms to use, and how to measure the complexity and runtime for your algorithms. The latter part is mostly called discrete mathematics.

Here's the hard truth: If you are "coding" and doing "full stack" you will be working on the first part, where you are googling and looking on stack overflow for solutions on what classes to use in the framework you are currently using and which methods to call for your current problem. But so can everyone else. You are a replaceable cog in the machine that can be off shored to cheaper countries. But the most interesting and fulfilling job is that of a programmer, where you are working on the latter part. But this one is full of theory and math, and also more frustrating more prone to banging your head on the wall, but in the end also more fulfilling. Also, you can change your class to things like "software architect" later.


Also: SCRUM is basically socialism/communism for programming. Change my mind!
Whenever a SCRUM project had problems, didn't really work out or even failed the excuse is always "what you used wasn't real SCRUM!". Just like the Soviet Union wasn't real communism. So the solution is always that you need to buy more into the ideology and hire a SCRUM master, and then everything will be alright. Also you need to purge the nonbelievers.

You call that a rant?

Noodleface said:

I'm not disagreeing with anything you said but you barely touched on my issue with assembly

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Because it formats your brain and thought processes when you know what happens under the hood.

For a practical example: Do you know how to play guitar? At which point did you stop being conscious about which finger goes where when you put them on the fretboard for a chord? The process of your hand putting the fingers down itself still plays out, just in your subconsciousness. This is what they usually call "muscle memory": but your muscles have no actual memory, it's still the brain controlling it, you just don't actively think about it, like when you brush your teeth you don't think about every move of your hand.

And that is the scary part: 99% of your day you are stuck in your subconsciousness and don't really make rational decisions, you are stuck in your habits.