Asked to recommend an intro algorithms text, I had no idea, but was curious and checked out the most popular ones. They’re all awful—not as books—but because the material covered shouldn’t be taught at that level. It’s mostly junk. Historical curiosities & intellectualization.
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In 1979, the material in the intro algorithms course was at least reasonably recent, even if mostly useless even then. Now it’s half a century old and mainly completely irrelevant unless you are going to do abstract research in the field.
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Why do programmer interviews concentrate on useless algorithms stuff, and why is it taught? Because it’s a talisman of systematicity. The comforting delusion that software engineering is clear-cut enough to provide certainty, understanding, and control.https://meaningness.com/eternalism-appeal …
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Any decent-sized codebase is effectively nebulous. Nothing definite can be said about it. You have to treat it as partially unknowable, uncontrollable, and incomprehensible. This is the reality. The algorithms curriculum pretends otherwise. It’s an eternalist religion…
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Why don’t universities teach the skills software engineers need? Software reality is nebulous, so the skills needed to master it are necessarily meta-rational. Universities don’t know how to teach meta-rationality (at all, and especially not at the undergraduate level).
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Reminded of the architecture professor in Donald Schön’s case study: “I can’t teach you design, but I can put you in a situation where you may *become a designer*.” Becoming a superior software engineer means adopting critical attitudes, not learning little math tricks.
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But ODEs are relevant again...in CS https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07366
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Well… not at the undergrad CS level, though. (Also… after reading the abstract, I’m highly skeptical, but don’t want to take the time to read more :)
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Calculus curriculum is so out of date that you can tell it's being presented in the wrong order for historical reasons _while you are taking it for the first time_
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@liangweihan4 ought to weigh in on thisThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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The fact that most undergraduate ODE courses are taught before/without linear algebra is preposterous.
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