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

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

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
Received on Fri Aug 12 2016 - 22:05:26 CEST