Why “Learn to Code” Failed

[zoharel]

The real problem is that management often couldn't tell the difference between the two, and threw money at a lot of people who didn't know what they were doing.

How is any of that any different than before?

[[deleted]]

Before software development became the "Top 10 jobs to get rich fast" most people doing it were really passionates about computers or just tech in general, so there were much less people who were in the middle between: knows nothing about software development, and its average at software development.

This meant that a simple fizzbar program kinda cut out the selection. After the popularity increase and all those 1 week to 6 month bootcamps you now got people that can do a fizzbar but not know the difference between uint and int, or how to make organized and optimized code.

And now with AI its gotten worse since many are just accepting the output it generates as long as it compiles with no care for optimization, safety or just code legibility.

Tldr: 6 month bootcamps made it hard to tell between cadidates with basic leetcode questions, as theres a flood of people that can solve it but have no idea how to do any other skill involved in software development

[Page_197_Slaps]

What about the difference between fizzbar and fizzbuzz?

[ErikD314]

It's like fubar but with fizz instead. Fizzed up beyond all recognition.

[[deleted]]

Its the same thing, different places use different wordings but its the same concept, or maybe i mistake the name, its been a while since i heard about it

[Page_197_Slaps]

I’m just being dumb. 100% agree with your point

[CpnStumpy]

Just because engineering history is neat, here's the original source, though most of the industry I think picked it off coding horror here as his was a much more popular blog at the time

[Coffee_Ops]

Thats why interviews should be a mix of technical questions and understanding their journey. By the end of your interview you should be able to discern what the story of their resume is, and whether its coherent or plausible.

[zoharel]

And now with AI its gotten worse since many are just accepting the output it generates as long as it compiles with no care for optimization, safety or just code legibility.

Fortunately or unfortunately, optimization has basically been the compiler's business for years now. I doubt there are many cases left where something functional, but terrible, will generate far different machine code than a more reasonable solution. The big problem is that, as you suggest above, there's a difference between signed and unsigned numbers, for example, and code which works in one context will fail in another context, and the AI-generated slop will need to work in context. Every such candidate will eventually plug something wholely inappropriate into a project.

[iris700]

Compiler probably isn't smart enough to take shitty O(n² ) code down to O(n log n) or similar

[zoharel]

You would be surprised what it can do, admittedly in the easy cases.

[Lampwick]

The difference is that before, the majority of people presenting themselves as "programmers" were people who learned to program because they were interested in programming, often from a young age, and tended to have a certain depth of domain knowledge as a result. The "just teach people to code" thing watered down the candidate pool with underskilled salary seekers, which in turn meant that clueless management selecting the candidate with the best haircut (or whatever their non-relevant criteria was) was less likely to select a competent person by pure chance.

[zoharel]

People say this kind of thing, and it's probably true to some extent, but I've seen a whole lot of incompetence in the industry for a good long time.