MOTM

I'm occasionally asked to give technical interviews for potential hires  
here at Amazon. I had one where the kid had a CS degree from Stanford,  
and an MSCS from UCSD. I asked him to write a function to reverse a  
linked list. It took him 45 minutes to come up with a very ugly  
solution. On the second question he decided to use Java and implemented  
a stack using ArrayList, but did his pushes and pops from the front of  
the list (which internally involves moving all the other elements), and  
when I asked him about the performance implications with a large list,  
he couldn't tell me why it was bad. What the hell did he do in those  
six years of education, and how did that qualify him for a degree?

A colleague of mine argues that one shouldn't have to understand the  
underlying implementation to program in a language, because a person  
doesn't have to know how an engine works to drive a car. These are the  
people that never change their oil. Their VCR's blink "12:00" all the  
time.

The most precious thing I could ever give my kids in life it would be a  
fundamental curiosity for how things work and a desire to learn. That  
is obviously more important than a degree from Stanford.

He didn't get the job.

Tomy
Another grump old fart, wrote his own JVM and Lisp interpreter to  
understand the languages.


On Mar 20, 2004, at 9:42 AM, Paul Schreiber wrote:

> (long URL)
>
> http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu//courses/eceprojectsland/STUDENTPROJ/ 
> 2002to2003/lil2/index.html
>
> I guess what depresses me is that one can get a MSEE from Cornell  
> hooking
> off-the shelf sensors to input ports of a uP and write some C code.  
> ARGHHH!!!!!
> FWIW, Bernie Hutchins (Electronotes) is from/still teaches at Cornell.  
> Bob Moogs
> PhD is from Cornell. ARRGGGGHHHH!!!
>
> The WAV file is cute, as are the hamsters.
>
> Paul S.
> grump old fart, can still use slide rule
>
> "Both C and UNIX started as a prank/inside joke and it sorta got out  
> of hand." -
> Dennis Richey
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor  
> ---------------------~-->
> Music that listens to you.
> LAUNCHcast. What's in your mix?
> http://us.click.yahoo.com/akrq7C/FARHAA/n1hLAA/VpLolB/TM
> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ~->
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>