Programming thread

[Kosher Dill]

Sometimes I like to turn it around and see if people can understand code that someone else wrote. Like, show them some nested loops.
Good: "They're examining every element in a 3-dimensional array until they find one that meets the criteria"
Awful: "OK uh, first x=0,y=0,z=0, then they call f(array[0][0][0]), then if f returned true you break, otherwise you go to the next iteration and x=0,y=0,z=1..."

Ridiculously simple, but so is FizzBuzz and people fail that all the time too.

 

[Samuel Hyde]

This is a result of leetcode problems culminating in a race to the bottom among applicants. There's a large body of test banks with questions and solutions on a certain Chinese website that every third-worlder trying to get a visa uses to cheat the system and because those candidates can vomit up answers immediately, the bar has been raised to absolutely ludicrous heights where you now have companies asking for shit like four leetcode mediums/hards in 20 minutes. So now your normal-ass engineer trying to get a job spends all their time grinding leetcode problems instead of actually developing useful skills. I mean go on youtube and look at the dudes live-streaming their job prep sessions - just non-stop leetcode grinding doing shit that never comes up in 90% of app development. And even when it does, the process in actual serious business software development is so slow that you're never going to have to solve a dynamic programming problem in 20 minutes or burn down the company - the kind of shit that'd go into a feature that needs DP is going to be like half a year of paperwork just to get into prod in the first place at any medium-ish sized company.

It's all so tiresome.

I think this is a horrible trend for tech. Leetcode style interviews selects for interviewers who "Just grind leetcode". But that type of person rarely has any kind of problem solving capacity. Candidates "learn" by memorizing solutions to leetcode questions and hope that those questions will come up in an interview. While chances are the applicant will have to sit for multiple interviews before getting one with a matching set of questions, the company is almost guaranteed to find an applicant who has the right answers to the leetcode questions.

If someone says he can solve a dynamic programming problem in 20 minutes that person is lying or has no idea what that means. Creating a novel dynamic programming solution to a problem can take literal years of R&D depending on how complex the problem is. Memorizing toy problems doesn't mean an applicant is any good.

 

[Kosher Dill]

While chances are the applicant will have to sit for multiple interviews before getting one with a matching set of questions, the company is almost guaranteed to find an applicant who has the right answers to the leetcode questions.

The ultimate problem is that most interviewers mistake "strong filter" for "good question". My favorite example is a guy who liked to give like 30 true/false questions on C++ language-lawyer trivia. It's great at spitting out a candidate ranking with minimum effort, but tells you absolutely nothing worth knowing.
This is also why people like to use probability questions. "So we have a drawer full of red socks and blue socks..."

 

[St.Davis]

I've seen people in this thread suggest that VScode is a poor IDE in some regard. Why is this? I've been using VScode for my projects, and thus far I've found it to be pretty good, though I've little experience with other IDEs.

 

[Inspector Rex]

I've seen people in this thread suggest that VScode is a poor IDE in some regard. Why is this? I've been using VScode for my projects, and thus far I've found it to be pretty good, though I've little experience with other IDEs.

I had to switch from CLion to VSCode at my new job and it lacks a lot of features that I took for granted (e.g. refactoring, cmake integration), and things like type resolution and autosuggestion are definitely better in Jetbrains.

VSCode is not as bad as many people say, and it's pretty good for a product that's completely free, but it's definitely worse than language-specific IDEs.

 

[St.Davis]

I had to switch from CLion to VSCode at my new job and it lacks a lot of features that I took for granted (e.g. refactoring, cmake integration), and things like type resolution and autosuggestion are definitely better in Jetbrains.

VSCode is not as bad as many people say, and it's pretty good for a product that's completely free, but it's definitely worse than language-specific IDEs.

I suppose part of it is that I'm writing in GDscript, so features like cmake arent really all that important to me (And I can hardly miss things that I've never had. I get the impression that this is a bit of a "sports team" argument, then?

This will sound like a bit of a retarded question, but what would a "refactoring" tool be doing, exactly? Obviously I'm doing all my refactoring of code manually, and I can't really imagine it being automated somehow.

 

[Inspector Rex]

This will sound like a bit of a retarded question, but what would a "refactoring" tool be doing, exactly?

Property/method renaming, moving them between classes, extracting them to a new class or making it virtual, create a new inherited class, stuff like that. For C++ it saves a shit ton of time, because you don't have to go through headers manually. This is probably true for C#/PHP as well because of their use in enterprise projects with a lot of boilerplate code.

I suppose part of it is that I'm writing in GDscript

Is it the one from Godot engine? If it doesn't have his own IDE with native support, then VSCode is probably the best option you have.

 

[Flatline]

Use VSCodium instead. It has zero telemetry, thanks to an active developer community, and works just as well as VSCode.

 

[St.Davis]

Property/method renaming, moving them between classes, extracting them to a new class or making it virtual, create a new inherited class, stuff like that. For C++ it saves a shit ton of time, because you don't have to go through headers manually. This is probably true for C#/PHP as well because of their use in enterprise projects with a lot of boilerplate code.

Interesting, that does sound quite useful. I'll have to consider CLion if I ever get around to using C (or similar languages)

Is it the one from Godot engine? If it doesn't have his own IDE with native support, then VSCode is probably the best option you have.

It is, yes. As far as I can tell it's a Python variant, though don't quote me on that. It's been fun to program in, I'd recommend it if anyone's wanting to do any little game projects.
They... uh, do have an IDE integrated with Godot. It doesnt even have the ability to split tabs, or search your code properly. It's absolutely horrendous and literally anything is a step forwards. VSCode had a "GodotTools" plugin and can be connected to the Godot development environment (allowing for immediate testing) so it seemed like a good option for me. Had to do a lot of messing around with fonts/type highlighting though.

Use VSCodium instead. It has zero telemetry, thanks to an active developer community, and works just as well as VSCode.

That might be worth a look at, thanks. What sort of telemetry are VSCode even DOING?

 

[gurutu]

Use VSCodium instead. It has zero telemetry, thanks to an active developer community, and works just as well as VSCode.

Not true. https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/DOCS.md#getting-all-the-telemetry-out
"Even though we do not pass the telemetry build flags (and go out of our way to cripple the baked-in telemetry), Microsoft will still track usage by default."
I would suggest an actual text editor (Emacs, Vim, whatever you prefer) to this. But if you prefer it, at least know that you have to disable the telemetry yourself.

 

[std::string]

There's a large body of test banks with questions and solutions on a certain Chinese website that every third-worlder trying to get a visa uses to cheat the system and because those candidates can vomit up answers immediately, the bar has been raised to absolutely ludicrous heights where you now have companies asking for shit like four leetcode mediums/hards in 20 minutes.

I think this is by design.

Look at who's left at Twitter. It's the H-1Bs afraid of being deported. They don't want you. They want Wang and Pajeet and Elozonachukwu because they can hold the threat of deportation over them.

Nobody wants to say this out loud for obvious reasons.

 

[Fcret]

Update from my first corpo job:

I solved a long-standing front-end bug in my first week (concurrency problem with JS callbacks that I can't believe no one else found), landed on the radar of the execs in our part of the company, and am apparently being fast-tracked towards a senior role.

WAGMI. The days of unfilled invoices and bologna sandwiches are over.

 

[Flatline]

I would suggest an actual text editor

I agree. Use Emacs, a real man's editor.

 

[Kršćanin Čendlervic]

Update from my first corpo job:

I solved a long-standing front-end bug in my first week (concurrency problem with JS callbacks that I can't believe no one else found), landed on the radar of the execs in our part of the company, and am apparently being fast-tracked towards a senior role.

WAGMI. The days of unfilled invoices and bologna sandwiches are over.

Now rewrite it in Rust.

 

[Souji Tendou]

Fuck you fags, I'm finally taking the learn2code bait.

 

[Whatevermancer]

I've seen people in this thread suggest that VScode is a poor IDE in some regard. Why is this? I've been using VScode for my projects, and thus far I've found it to be pretty good, though I've little experience with other IDEs.

My main issue is that VSCode is built using electron, which is a performance overhead. It's not uncommon for it to hog up half a gigabyte of RAM while being idle and often you can see the input delay when you're scrolling or selecting text.

 

[Fcret]

Now rewrite it in Rust.

Sorry, I haven't refilled my HRT prescription yet. Can't write Rust without a stockpile of titty skittles.

Fuck you fags, I'm finally taking the learn2code bait.

I mean if you already have a job right now, this is probably a good time to do it on the side. Hone your skills in preparation for the next upswing in tech hiring.

 

[Flatline]

Fuck you fags, I'm finally taking the learn2code bait.

learn to weld.

 

[Flabba Wabba Jabba]

My main issue is that VSCode is built using electron, which is a performance overhead. It's not uncommon for it to hog up half a gigabyte of RAM while being idle and often you can see the input delay when you're scrolling or selecting text.

500MB isn't that bad considering IntelliJ often chugs gigabytes on idle. It's not great but I guess with IntelliJ, you've got the enterprise performance and features that VSCode just can't offer.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

George Hotz could be the one person where I question myself and think, “Why haven’t I heard about this man sooner?”

Right now, he’s probably the one programmer that is actually passionate and serious about his craft. It kind of makes my OK to satisfactory programming skills look weak. Still, his videos are great.