>Well, in my rich work experience, I've had to maintain a lot of other people's code. Let me tell you one thing - code written by someone clueful about algorithms and efficiency and data structures is *miles* away from code written by the "I learned by studying the Java book" or "I took a course at Sivan" kind of programmer.
...
As I said in the example itself, you don't necessarily have to have a BSc to have the necessary clue. However, when someone has a BSc, you can be sure that he *was* exposed to the required concepts and actually marked for them. So it gives you that much certainty.
My only disagreement is about the assumption that someone with BSc is indeed clueful. Some of them are, some aren't and it's the same exact thing with non BSc people.
A lot of people who did study Comp Sci managed to learn algorythmics and complixy issue as an abstract concept and are completly unable to *apply* this theoretical knowledge in real life.
I have a simple question I ask people that claim to have Comp Sci degree which I interview for jobs:
The company you worked for has a scripting language. The code for the scripting language engine main loop looks like this:
Foo state;
while(!done) {
done = eval(GetNextLine(), state); }
Assume you have any possible function you might ever want to get any meaningfull state of the running program from "state", as well as any procedure you might need to query the script text and structure.
The marketing dept. have gotten report from the field operators that our customers, which are not VERY technical, has a very specific problem with our scripting language - they tend to write scripts that go into infinate loops.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design an addition to the scriping engine that would alert the user that he has written a script that has an infinite loop.
The percent of Comp Sci degree holder that don't answer the qestion correctly is above 50.
In addition, it might be that the percentage of cluefull people with BSc is higher. *However* some of the brightest and most talented programmers I know lack a BSc is Comp Sci for vairous reasons - one is dyslexic, the other has a Physics degree. Are you really willing to forgo them in advance?
However I think that if someone is a kernel guru, he must be clueful by definition. Especially if any of his work has been peer-reviewed.
Non trivial amount of peer reviewed work is a definite sign for cluefull ness.
Gilad
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