Re: [dev] What do you guys think about competitive programming?

From: Mattias Andrée <maandree_AT_kth.se>
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2016 22:13:57 +0200

On Fri, 12 Aug 2016 22:05:26 +0200
Martin Kühne <mysatyre_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 9:58 PM, Mattias Andrée
> <maandree_AT_kth.se> wrote:
> > Programming contests can be fun, but it depends on the
> > competition, some barely have a focus on programming
> > but mathematics instead. I don't see them as promoting
> > bad practices, you are under extraordinary pressure so
> > this should not influence your programming practices
> > under normal conditions. I don't think the skills, that
> > are generally useful for programming contests, are
> > generally useful in other contexts. I hope recruiters
> > realise the differences in programming competitions and
> > what the employee will be doing, but that has merits
> > similar to any other contests, mathematics skills, and
> > other problem solving skills such as solving puzzles.
> > It shows competitive attitude and cognitive
> > capabilities.
>
>
> I even see programming skills wrt free / open source
> projects different to those an employer would expect. An
> employer sooner says they're disappointed of somebody's
> performance, while my personally growing patchset may
> never actually ripen to be submitted to upstream for all
> the various reasons. Maybe it's my own code that sucks,
> but maybe it's the project's design decisions or upstream
> maintainer's understanding which is incompatible with the
> work. Nobody has to be loyal to anybody else in these
> matters, which I see as a core feature of these things.
>
> cheers!
> mar77i
>

Agreed.

Noone should be fooled to thinking that hobby programming,
which free software and open source projects often are,
is representative of a typical programming job. And because
of the time pressure in programming contests, programming
contests are closer (although not that much) to a normal
programming job than hobby programming.

Received on Fri Aug 12 2016 - 22:13:57 CEST

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