
What to Expect at Coding Bootcamp if You are Already a Developer - burritofanatic
http://danielleleong.com/blog/2015/11/14/what-to-expect-from-coding-bootcamp-dev-accelerators.html
======
kazinator
> _We do algorithms every day at 9am (9am!) on whiteboards in groups. It’s a
> pain in the ass, but they’re necessary for job interviews. What’s kind of
> amazing is that an algorithm that used to take me hours /days last year now
> takes me 15 minutes._

What does that mean, "do" algorithms, I wonder. Design algorithms based on
requirements which describe the inputs and outputs? Implement existing
algorithms from a description? Check the correctness of algorithms? Some of
all of the above?

If it's the same algorithm as last year, why would it be amazing that it takes
15 minutes to do it (whatever that entails)? If you had to basically reinvent
insertion sort the first time and now you can just regurgitate it from memory,
of course it's faster.

~~~
whiteboarder
You are being pedantic. The author obviously meant "algorithms that you might
be asked to do on a whiteboard during a tech interview at Google, FB, ect"

~~~
kazinator
I honestly don't know what exactly that means. (Given your nickname, it must
be obvious to you, of course).

Is it like, _" write down the entire A-star search algorithm in pseudo-code
from memory"_?

~~~
whiteboarder
I live in a bubble in San Francisco and post on HN, so when talking to people
I usually assume (perhaps incorrectly), that they are all software engineers
between the ages of 18-25 currently in the job market, interviewing at all the
same hip 5 companies, so I apologize :P .

In software engineer, when applying for jobs at tech companies, you are
universally asked to program solutions to algorithms problems on a whiteboard
that follow a very specific formula. If you ever interview for a software
position, you will get these exact kinds of questions.

Such questions are usually things like:

"Given a N sorted lists of numbers, join the lists into a single sorted list
efficiently"

"Implement a Stack which has push, pop, and minimum operations in O(1)"

"Traverse a Tree and print out each item in level by level order" ect

They are all very formulaic and similar. In the last 3 years I've done about
100 algorithms interviews, and 9 out of 10 times it is a question I've been
asked before.

You can find other examples at Glassdoor, hacker rank, or project Euler.

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Google-Interview-
Question...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Google-Interview-
Questions-E9079.htm?filter.jobTitleFTS=software+engineer)

[https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/)

~~~
rhizome
Did you get hired?

~~~
whiteboarder
I've received about a dozen job offers in the last 3 years. TBH, I don't even
consider myself better than an average programmer. I've just practiced
interview questions a lot.

------
giaour
It's really worrying to read that these bootcamps hire instructors who have no
experience and whose only relevant education is a different session of the
same bootcamp.

~~~
xiaoma
At the "bootcamp" where I studied, the primary instructor was a very senior
ex-Twitter engineer who had built their internal code class.

~~~
giaour
Clearly, your experience was not universal.

~~~
xiaoma
People who go to four year schools don't universally have the same experience
either. That's the problem with talking about "these bootcamps" or "these
universities" or "these" anything.

~~~
giaour
That's a fair point. But as someone who hasn't been to a bootcamp, I find it
impossible to tell the difference between good ones and bad ones, as they
aren't accredited or anything like that.

Edit: for tone.

------
abeisgreat
> functions are always referred to as “he”

I've been programming for a while and I'm pretty sure I've never heard someone
gender a function

~~~
cheez
Likely an Indian instructor. Using "he" is commonly said for "it" in Hindi,
because there is no actual word for "it", it's inferred by context.

Not 100% sure. But otherwise, I also have never heard of a gendered program
component.

~~~
joshvm
During my physics undergrad, several of my lecturers were German speaking and
would refer to algebraic objects as "this guy". e.g. "We take the derivative
of this guy and we get blah". Any language which is gendered would probably
have this issue when translated to English.

~~~
nborgo
I don't think that's all too uncommon for native English speakers. While
pairing, I pretty regularly refer to chunks of code as "this guy" or "that
guy".

Maybe they picked it up from someone while learning English and it stuck with
them.

~~~
joshvm
This is true, I definitely anthropomorphise my code, but it's usually to abuse
it when it doesn't do what I want.

e.g. "What the f'ing hell are you doing, function, you're not supposed to do
that!"

