I thought #1 was great and the rest felt like watered down or badly written versions of standard advice.
The focus on "algorithms 101" is pretty thinly veiled snobbery IMHO. If he knew math itself really well he'd probably claim that was of vital importance to all programming at Google too. Instead he falls back on what he does know that feels like "real computer science".
My experience is that most programming is usually pretty unscientific and that things like great taste in design are far more important than the scalability of any given algorithm.
I'd bet there are a 100 CS PHDs at Google for every truly challenging problem solvable by a more scalable algorithm.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 3.3 ms ] threadThe focus on "algorithms 101" is pretty thinly veiled snobbery IMHO. If he knew math itself really well he'd probably claim that was of vital importance to all programming at Google too. Instead he falls back on what he does know that feels like "real computer science".
My experience is that most programming is usually pretty unscientific and that things like great taste in design are far more important than the scalability of any given algorithm.
I'd bet there are a 100 CS PHDs at Google for every truly challenging problem solvable by a more scalable algorithm.