Re: Testing job applicants

[kragen@dnaco.net (Kragen Sitaker)]

In article <7qoqh0$l59$1@cascade.cs.ubc.ca>,
Donald Gillies <gillies@cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
>I think this is a bit of an over-generalization.  I have worked with
>many excellent programmers who have computer science degrees.
>However, two things are the norm :
>
>  (a) All were self-taught before their degree.  All were excellent
>      *before* the degree.
>  (b) All have *engineering* degrees 
. . . 
>If you look at the best engineers in "anything", imho they are all
>self-taught.
. . .
>Now if you like the non-computer science hires better than the CS
>ones, perhaps it's because they are all self-taught.  But I have seen
>a lot of simple problems that were badly botched by self-taught
>people.

I have been answering a lot of questions in comp.lang.perl.misc over
the last week or two.  Most of them are questions that suggest that the
querent is either self-taught (badly) or taught by truly incompetent
teachers.

On the other hand, I haven't taken any Perl courses, either, and I'm
answering these questions correctly.

I suspect there are reluctantly self-taught people and eagerly
self-taught people.

>For example, who here wants to hire a compiler person who is self
>taught ??  Without a good formal background and a thorough
>understanding of language theory, an attempt to write a translator
>will be 100% guaranteed failue.  I've seen it several times in the
>past.  While it's possible to find someone who learned all this stuff
>on his own, the risk is not worth the reward...

Yesterday, I posted a program to clpm to manipulate expressions in the
lambda calculus.  It parses input lambda expressions and does
normal-order beta-reduction.  Correctly.  In Perl.

I've been reading Friedman et al.'s textbook, _Essentials of
Programming Languages_; the program was inspired by some of the
exercises.

I suspect that when I finish the book, I will have a much better
understanding of its subject matter than nearly all students who just
finished a class taught from it.  And I will be quite competent to
write compilers.

(ObApple2: I'm hoping I can write a decent Scheme system for my Apple
//e.)

I haven't had a CS class since 6th grade; at the time, I was one of
those insufferable know-it-alls who thinks he knows everything there is
to know about programming, but doesn't know much at all.  I think I
have improved a bit.

Teaching oneself such things means that one can slow down when one is
having trouble understanding, in order to do more in-depth study of the
matter, and one can skip over parts one already knows.  (Reluctantly
self-taught people tend to do the opposite.)  So really curious
self-taught people are likely to have a deeper understanding of the
subject matter.

>The person himself is the only guarantee of competence.  

Agreed.
-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Tue Sep 14 1999
55 days until the Internet stock bubble bursts on Monday, 1999-11-08.
<URL:http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/bubble.html>