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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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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There might be a bit of pedagogical value to covering that stuff in the same way that there’s value in having physics undergrads recapitulate significant experiments from the 18th century.
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It would be cool - if a bit sadistic - to make students capitulate such experiments *using the technology of the time*. I remember reading a detailed account of such an attempt. (Boyle's law?) A learning experience.
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