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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The undergrad algorithms curriculum hasn’t changed since I took the course in 1979 (!). Highly reminded of Gian-Carlo Rota’s rant about differential equations—a topic everyone hates and that is totally obsolete, but undergraduates’ time is wasted on it. https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf …pic.twitter.com/569Wu9lcpi
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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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Yes, unless the material is interesting for its own sake. (Which it was, for me; but the opportunity cost is probably too high for most.)
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