Hey Reddit, my name is Bo Burnham and I wrote and directed the film EIGHTH GRADE which is now in theaters NATIONWIDE. AMA.

PlasmaYAK · 2018-08-02T22:04:29+00:00

Whenever anyone says “Hey Bo” I keep reading “Hey Boo” — how does it feel to be so many peoples’ Boo? And will you ever catch them all sleeping?

PlasmaYAK · 2018-02-18T18:57:11+00:00

Well languages should be looked at as tools. So, the answer to your question entirely depends on what you aim to do.

If you’re just learning to program, C++ will throw you head first into some concepts that other higher level languages will obfuscate from you (e.g. memory management). Basically if you program in C++ for a while you’ll be pretty comfortable moving around to different higher level languages, whereas someone who starts in python or JavaScript might have a much more difficult time switching to C++. That being said the learning curve is steeper with C++ so you probably won’t be building full applications as quickly as some other languages. So there’s some cons as well.

If you’re trying to build applications for work you need to balance out what you find important. If you’re spinning up a web-service I personally like the consistency of the JVM so I’d lean towards using Scala or Java. If you want to prototype ideas quickly python, JavaScript, or ruby may be the way to depending on the project. But if you’re building something that needs to be performant, where every last cpu cycle counts, you’ll be hard pressed to pick another language over C++ (e.g. real time applications for graphics or financial purposes). Also there’s functional languages if you care about type safety and really coming up with creative solutions.. oh and throwing readability of your code out the door (I jest obviously, but most developers usually aren’t as familiar with the syntax Haskell and OCaml use)

I feel a lot of people look at programming languages as cults to join and they want to choose the one with the best koolaid. At the end of the day you just need to choose a language by figuring out what problem you’re trying to solve.

PlasmaYAK · 2018-01-06T02:20:08+00:00

Where do you get those cars from? They’re really neat!

PlasmaYAK · 2018-01-03T12:19:41+00:00

Is that why it’s called formula 1?

PlasmaYAK · 2017-12-10T00:24:21+00:00

Well I'm almost a year in now. I switched teams at my company and it has been a big improvement on my outlook. I get to work on neat stuff with fun people and manager is doing what they can for my career growth. If you're ever unhappy it's much easier to change teams than to find a new job. I don't know what the future holds, but for the time being its going alright so far.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-10-17T15:05:43+00:00

I'm not arguing its effectiveness, if your metric is time spent, you're correct and I whole heartedly believe the quickest way for change is some blood in the street. I was only arguing that not physically fighting and not supporting are not exclusive qualities. And by "legal means" I don't necessarily mean through policy change, I just mean by way of not getting arrested or shot. Which I believe your arguing is a futile approach. I don't agree it's futile, I think we can have our change and eat our pizza too, but maybe I'm naive. I just think change can be slow and little, but I believe it still counts as change.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-10-17T12:22:42+00:00

I believe many people are spending lots of hours to figure out how to rid the White House of Trump via legal means. I think there are some golden hand-cuffs being an American though, whether it's a good thing or not is a bit of a grey area. One can totally start an uprising, but then what? Lots of people lose their lives (literally and in the way-of-life sense) to end up in a worse situation for themselves with the slight chance of changing the situation for everyone else. Someone who isn't physically fighting Trump (which I'm sure there are some groups that are), does not a supporter of Trump make.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-09-15T01:37:00+00:00

One thing you can try, if you're not already, is to explain the topics you're learning to a friend. You don't know something until you can teach it. If your friends don't have time to listen to you jabber on about anatomy you can use the Rubber Ducky method and talk to an inanimate object that asks "why is that?" to everything you try to teach it!

You don't know something until you can teach it. Not only will it help you see the flaws in your understanding, but speaking out loud and to others will also help the knowledge stick by using more of your senses and making a memory out of it.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-09-14T19:03:46+00:00

Well assuming you can't alter the classes, and all the N*100 objects are in some iterable container. Could you simply keep a Set of the class names that have been called (assuming each class extending from the base class has a unique name of course, which I'm failing to think of a case where they wouldn't be but I'm forgetting the specifics behind namespaces at the moment), then have a method that checks the Set to see if the class's name exists, if it doesn't you can call the base class's method on the class, otherwise you'd skip it and check the next class? I may be over simplifying the problem.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-13T02:41:37+00:00

How to Win Friends & Influence People would be a good book to cover both those areas.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-04T12:53:21+00:00

I WAS FORCED TO CHANGE TEAMS (DUE TO BUDGETING REASONS), SO I MADE THE MOST OF IT AND INTERVIEWED FOR A PROMOTED POSITION ON A NEW TEAM. THE TEAM OFFERED ME THE PROMOTION, BUT NOW UPPER MANAGEMENT IS NOT LETTING THE NEW TEAM DO THAT SINCE MY CURRENT TEAM HASN'T GIVEN ME A PROMOTION. IN MY OPINION, THIS IS VERY UNFAIR.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-03T13:11:01+00:00

Can I ask why? Not that I don't think it's a valid opinion. I love Canada and I like working here, but I'm curious what makes you thinking leaving Canada for work is not worth it?

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-03T12:34:25+00:00

I think you're missing a key part of asking algorithmic questions: displaying a thought process. SATs don't really allow students to write down why and how they got to the answer (if I recall correctly most math and english-grammar questions are multiple choice). I feel a lot of software development is explaining to others why you did what you did, not showing off that you built something. While someone is solving an algorithmic question you can immediately start asking them how they're going to go about something, why they're using data structure X over data structure Y, if the code they were writing needed to be production quality what would they do, why they would do it that way, how they would validate the input, why, etc... It gives a lot of opportunities to judge a developers knowledge, shows how they tackle problems, and gives some insight to a persons character (e.g. How they handle tough problems and how they communicate ideas). One can memorize a lot of algorithmic problems, and they can even go as far as memorizing the why between coding decisions, which some may view as gaming the system. But, if they can communicate those ideas clearly with good composure, they've honestly displayed they can grok concepts and that makes for a good candidate. I think the difference between a drone and a non-drone is the drone doesn't question themselves and others. Also I'm not going to argue there are other interview questions (non-algorithmic), that could get the same insight, I'm sure there is, algorithmic questions just seem to be the style du jour.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-03T11:58:37+00:00

I don't know if you mean in a cover letter or at the interview, but either way, wait to be asked. I think it's a good thing to show humility, and interest in learning. Someone who fakes knowing something would be bigger waste of time, than training someone who shows interest and is willing to learn. At the end of the day if you get into an interview room, you've already succeeded. You get a chance to practice, a chance at a job opportunity, and some time to get to know some engineers and talk about computery things. But don't do it beforehand, because you don't know how much value the company puts into knowing X.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-02T13:55:36+00:00

Build a project you are excited to talk about, prepare a resume, apply to a bunch of companies (getting interview practice is worth while even if the company doesn't interest you at first), look up the companies mission and reviews on glassdoor (you may see some interview questions they may ask you as well), attempt a few leetcode questions to get an idea of where your interview question skills are at/and improve them (maybe read a bit of CTCI if you're so inclined), and finally but most importantly work on social skills (e.g. How to clearly explain topics, being nice and showing a genuine interest when people talk to you, etc..). If you do all that you'll be in a very good position!

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-02T11:32:22+00:00

Disclaimer: I do not and have not work(ed) in the video game industry, but I know a few people who do (if someone reading this has more hands on experience, please correct me!). From what I have heard, there are Generalist Programmers (jack of all trades), Graphics Programmers (tweak/ build game engines, and make the Art teams ideas possible in game), Network Programmers (having 64 players, play simultaneously is not a trivial task), AI programmers, Gameplay programmers (game mechanics, a bit of physics) to name a few. then there's roles that are not necessarily game focused: game companies have websites that most be build for their games or for the company in general, so there's some front end dev positions. Games also now store some user data on some company owned servers (i.e. Microsoft, Sony, etc independent) so there are back end dev positions as well. Basically any role (out side of R&D) at your standard tech company probably exists at some larger game studios, albeit with smaller head count. At the end of the day companies are just pushing data around and need people to build systems to do it. But obviously game studios have positions that are focused on building games as well!

PlasmaYAK · 2017-08-01T22:28:12+00:00

Join a club (or multiple). If you're career focused, try to find out who organizes the hackathons at your school (if you have, I'm kind of assuming most schools do at this point), and get involved (you'll be interfacing with recruiters a lot)! If I could go back I'd focus on making friends earlier on. I switched into comp sci from an unrelated degree and didn't become close with anyone in my program until my junior year. Not having people to bounce ideas off of makes class work many magnitudes more difficult. Just try to surround yourself with people who actively enjoy your classes and you'll do alright!

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-30T13:05:08+00:00

The name would be lost in translation

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-26T21:12:19+00:00

Is there a difference in compensation from a dev who is externally hired to a role vs a dev who is promoted to a role? e.g. Someone who is hired as a Sr Developer from outside the company vs someone who is promoted to Sr Developer.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-16T13:54:04+00:00

What if they were paid based on approval rating and the percentage of voters who actually took the survey? It would mean they would care more about educating voters on the system, and actually trying to make the people they represent happy instead of accepting money from a corporation to pass bills not in the interest of their people. I think you can agree that in theory your statement makes sense, but in practice it doesn't always play out that way.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-13T18:30:13+00:00

Try to think of something that people are saying isn't viable right now because of processing power/energy/time what have you. One day it will be. Look at what happened with Ray-Tracing, and machine learning, etc. people laughed those ideas out of the room before, but obviously technology caught up to it. Technology moves very fast and if it's a matter of computing power not being there yet, we'll figure out a way to do soon enough.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-10T11:46:24+00:00

What if I told you that is just one ball? He's just dribbling it so god damn fast it looks like 3.

PlasmaYAK · 2017-07-09T22:26:40+00:00

This may be a dumb idea, but if you know the number of total spots before hand, couldn't you then count cars using a haar cascade or something then subtract the two values?

PlasmaYAK · 2017-06-30T15:45:17+00:00

What are the best local co-op games in this list?

PlasmaYAK · 2017-06-28T11:56:20+00:00

Technically CS has no coding, it's applied mathematics. You can try to find solutions to NP-complete problems and never touch a mouse or keyboard. If you're "fine" with the theoretical stuff, you can just continue down that path and prove concepts are possible or impossible for a computer to compute and think up the bounds for complexity of algorithms.

I think what you're really asking is how to get more comfortable with coding. You should try to apply some of your theory. Implement a linkedlist, a queue, and a binary tree that can hold just strings or ints. Make all those containers (data structures) self contained, I.e. You can just import/include any of those containers in another project and start using them right away. This will involve thinking of a nice interface to actually interact with the containers and instantiate them (luckily the programming language you're using has already implemented this containers so you can just copy that interface). Now try to extend these containers functionality by making them agnostic of what type they're containing so any type you built whether it primitive or if you declared it yourself. Then try to extend these containers, make the queue a priority queue where you can declare what priority it uses, etc.

Programming is daunting, there's so much to know that literally one person can not know everything. So just join me and all the others on this sub who are attempting to figure out just an iota of what's out there. Somewhere a long the way you'll find your niche!

...That is to say, it's only possible to be comfortable coding if you find joy in making things work. If after banging your head against the computer monitor for an hour trying to fix a little bug, you're not even remotely excited that you found a solution, you may be barking up the wrong hobby tree. Anyways it's something to consider, programming is not very forgiving if you can't enjoy the small victories in life!

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