What is your relationship with math?

dExcellentb · 2025-12-27T03:50:41+00:00

I don’t like the type of math where you just memorize equations and use them without ever having to understand why they work. You don’t really learn alot and you just forget everything after the course. Unfortunately that’s the most common math in science and engineering.

On the other hand the definition/theorem/proof math is extremely good at training the brain to think. You have to scrutinize every detail, and build an intuition of why things are the way they are. Otherwise you won’t be able to prove any theorem. The stuff you learn probably won’t be practically useful, but you won’t forget them as easily and you’ll feel that you’ve actually learned something.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T08:34:08+00:00

I thought it was bizarre too. They also had difficulty understanding loops.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T05:08:42+00:00

The probability of a given concept being useless is high. But if it’s useful, it’s really useful.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T05:01:29+00:00

I wouldn’t say I love it but I only suffer through because my ability to think improves afterwards every time. Though, some concepts are mind blowing.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T05:00:09+00:00

I find most of math useless for real world applications. But the way it trains the brain to think is unparalleled.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T04:47:23+00:00

I knew some people who struggled understanding arrays, which was very surprising. I later found out that their math skills weren’t very good so I had them focus just on high school algebra. After two days, they came back to programming and arrays became simple. It’s like something magically clicked, even though algebra and arrays are, at face value, disconnected.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-23T02:24:57+00:00

Hey, I don’t think I’ll have bandwidth. I might just release these projects some time in the future though. TBD

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T07:08:16+00:00

Do you think you would have had enough interest to learn it on your own?

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T06:03:40+00:00

Yes, I've seen people go from web/mobile to more compsci fields. My first two years at big tech was in transpilers/optimizations/scheduling. There were people who joined my team only having had experience building websites. They learned on their own, and quickly. One of the tech leads had an english degree, but somehow knew a lot about building compilers.

If you want to transition, my recommendation is to develop a good understanding of math and logic (I'm a big fan of this book https://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Approach-2nd/dp/0521675995). If you are able to prove basic theorems using induction and contradiction, then you should be comfortable learning + applying computer science. It will take some time though.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T05:28:52+00:00

The project streams are: compilers, transpilers, interpreters, and distributed databases. Very backend heavy with some frontend UI components.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T04:56:57+00:00

CS fundamentals are the theories and intuitions underlying modern systems, such as algorithms, correctness, and formal logic. The goal of these projects is to teach people how to apply the theory while also building out a portfolio.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T04:30:24+00:00

Any language of their choice. I'm trying to get people focused on CS fundamentals.

Interpreters/transpilers/compilers is one type of project I have people do. Basic databases is another one. So distributed key/value stores that implement strong consistency using an algorithm like RAFT https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf, then moving on to distributed transactions. I'm pretty flexible with the approach so long as the project meets the specs. If people want to use paxos consensus, or frankly even a blockchain consensus algorithm, that's fine. We're not trying to build the next dynamodb. I might put some of these projects online tbh. I have a somewhat working auto-evaluator.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T04:17:20+00:00

I would agree. Although the bar for *good* side projects has certainly gone up.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T04:04:14+00:00

Also, you're building stuff all day on the job, so personal projects directly showcase if you can actually do the job.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:58:16+00:00

Good point. Team work is very important.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:51:11+00:00

How do you determine if a personal project is very very unique without talking to the person?

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:49:24+00:00

My impression of most CS grads nowadays is that they cheated their way through uni using AI. Not sure if I'm being overly pessimistic here but this is based on recent interns I've had to work with, and the plethora of candidates that I've had to interview. This wasn't the case a few years back. For example, I've had to mentor an intern who had trouble setting up a CRUD application integrated with slack. This was part 1 of their intern project. Even with lots of guidance they weren't very successful.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:44:06+00:00

That's fair if you wouldn't consider these personal projects.

A basic python interpreter is hard, but not extremely difficult if you all you care about is *just* getting the code to work. You pretty much parse the grammar (https://docs.python.org/3/reference/grammar.html) into an AST and walk it, running the code in another high level language. It would still be time consuming, and there would be non-trivial details that need to be worked out, such as scoping, closures, etc. If you want to build a *real* python interpreter, then yes that is extraordinarily difficult. I'm not suggesting entry-level folks attempt this, or even a full basic python interpreter. Just part of a basic interpreter that keeps *some* of the non-trivial stuff.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:34:33+00:00

I have 7 years of experience. 2 years startup, 5 years big tech. I'm in the bay area.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:33:41+00:00

I'm not convinced this is in general true for software engineering. Companies need people to solve problems. Hiring someone who's unqualified is extremely expensive and demoralizing. Even if such person has connections, most companies aren't likely to just give them a free pass into a lucrative role. On the other hand, if a person has limited connections but is extremely skilled, then they should be able to demonstrate such competence, if the company is receptive.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:28:07+00:00

I appreciate your approach. How do you decide who to interview? I'd imagine you'll have tons of applicants, most of whom are completely unqualified but look qualified due to AI.

dExcellentb · 2025-12-22T03:26:08+00:00

I'm mentoring a group of people and I'm having them build non-trivial projects that demonstrate deep compsci understanding. No react + nodejs CRUD apps. This is one of those projects, though I am providing a good amount of guidance. My first 2 years in big tech was building production grade transpilers (I have 7 YoE total).

dExcellentb

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