In the past this book was interesting since getting good at it did somewhat help you become a better programmer. At the very least, your typing and ability to write a first implementation with fewer bugs improved as you practiced competitive programming, to some extent even your ability to problem solve and come up with good architectures improved.
That’s all out of the window now. If we are really in “do we even read the code?” territory, then this is just a hobby to do for fun, and doesn’t matter for any real world work. But even if we read the code, but most code is written by prompting and iterating with agents, I don’t know if this will be helpful at all.
This one is quite difficult, it sacrifices some readability for cleverness and conciseness. I find Algorithmic Thinking by Zingaro much more approachable but almost as dense.
I think if you always follow the same abbreviations, they'll be readable to you.
Remember, these are throwaway programs; not something that you need to worry about someone else maintaining, or something you need to worry about opening up 5 years later.
I’m a big fan of this book. It’s an equally great algorithms reference and way to prep for coding interviews. I haven’t had one in a while but doubt they’ve changed too much in the last half decade.
is leetcode still a thing in interviews. I personally want it to be. We need to start gatekeeping this profession hard ( this is a hard 180 from my stance for last 2 decades). Also regret contributing and being pro opensource.
Closedsource, credentialism and gatekeeping is my new stance.
Who exactly is it that will be doing the gatekeeping? I have a hard time imagining companies caring much about competitive coding scores, and I’ve certainly never heard of layoffs being decided based on LeetCode performance.
I'm not sure if I agree with this but I find the downvotes at even the suggestion of some mechanisim to protect employment sad.
No other profession is as eager to make themselves obsolete as those who build software.
Maybe they think the world runs on meritocracy. Anyway looks like now they are seeing what happens when there are no gates at all and anyone can do what you do.
Two decades learning from others, then close the gate. Can’t ding you for inconsistency though. Your contribution to this discussion is consistent with your new ethos. Good luck with your new approach to the world.
Closed source will do squat unless you protect your binaries with some sort of secure enclave encryption scheme. AI can reverse engineer your binaries and deliver a copyright-laundered version in hours or days.
Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2017) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17605395 - July 2018 (14 comments)
Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2017) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16952222 - April 2018 (121 comments)
A Competitive Programmer's Handbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14115826 - April 2017 (157 comments)
Competitive programmers handbook - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13762408 - March 2017 (2 comments)
That’s all out of the window now. If we are really in “do we even read the code?” territory, then this is just a hobby to do for fun, and doesn’t matter for any real world work. But even if we read the code, but most code is written by prompting and iterating with agents, I don’t know if this will be helpful at all.
Remember, these are throwaway programs; not something that you need to worry about someone else maintaining, or something you need to worry about opening up 5 years later.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-61794-2
Additionally, there is a nice set of problems that go along with the book:
https://cses.fi/problemset/
I did, nevertheless, learn quite a bit from it. Would recommend to everyone. It's well written.
Ive been relearning a ton that either over-reliance on llms caused me to forget, or just lost due to time.
Its been extremely fun. I really missed the feeling of thinking really hard and arriving at a solution.
I hope we dont lose this desire as a species.
Closedsource, credentialism and gatekeeping is my new stance.
thats not what gatekeeping is
No other profession is as eager to make themselves obsolete as those who build software.
Maybe they think the world runs on meritocracy. Anyway looks like now they are seeing what happens when there are no gates at all and anyone can do what you do.