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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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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End of conversation
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It's a talisman... yup, and too many corporate types buy into the belief...
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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