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When a programmer thinks not knowing BFS is okay

7 points by hintymad ↗ HN
Well, just look at what happened when a researcher didn't know calculus: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152

13 comments

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drugme
Except this wasn't was an "algorithm researcher" position he was applying to.

It was, you know, a programming position.

g9yuayon
I'm pretty sure that no one has a opening to research how to find the area under a simple curve.
drugme
If you can find an aspect of frontend development even remotely analogous to integral calculus, LMK.
dekhn
tensorflow.js?
drugme
That's an application. Not a matter intrinsic to frontend development.
Gibbon1
Someones really really butthurt.
zzzcpan
Not knowing BFS is not just ok, it's better for problem solving. You should not be training your brain to remember specific names of complex algorithms. You should be training your brain to think in primitives, in basic algorithms and data structures and be able to naturally get to BFS without knowing what it is when it fits the problem well. At least if you want to be a programmer and not a master of interviews. Don't take pride in knowing terminology. Terminology comes naturally after working for some time in the domain.
dekhn
in college, this was "don't memorize anything for physics exams, because you can derive everything from a small number of basic physical principles".
Gibbon1
No one asks a mechanical engineer to white board FEA or integrate by parts. Everyone just accepts that an experienced engineer will be rusty about things outside his career domain.
drugme
Well, that was college. If you want a job with Google (or the companies that try to mindlessly mimic their hiring process) --

your best bet is to memorize.

dekhn
yes, when I got my job at google I had basically memorized CLR (I was a biologist, not a computer scientist, so I had to do a bunch of extra reading).