Math skills can occasionally be useful, but I don’t see it as a dealbreaker.
The good thing about being good with math is that it usually means you’re a good problem solver, and problem solving is an important skill for programming. But the reverse isn’t necessarily true. You can be good at problem solving but still be bad at math.
I would say if you’re struggling with the programming courses, then maybe look somewhere else. Otherwise, go ahead.
They would see nothing wrong with it
Python is truly a mess when Docker is considered a solution.
Nothing comes close to Perl’s abuse of global variables. Oh you called this function? Take a guess which global variables it will use.
The type is dynamic. It can be whatever you wish.
Reminds me of a YouTube video giving thorough advice on what you should do if you would ever time travel back to medieval Europe.
From the original document:
Software manufacturers should build products in a manner that systematically prevents the introduction of memory safety vulnerabilities, such as by using a memory safe language or hardware capabilities that prevent memory safety vulnerabilities. Additionally, software manufacturers should publish a memory safety roadmap by January 1, 2026.
My interpretation is that smart pointers are allowed, as long it’s systematically enforced. Switching to a memory safe language is just one example.
TAOCP is a misleading title. It shouldn’t be computer programming. It should be computer science.
For most people, programming is the engineering discipline. I think that’s a very different art form. Software engineers are rarely dealing with the type of problems TAOCP is concerned about.
The demo they showed is mostly a 1 hour cinematic with barely any gameplay. Fancy graphics, but if I want to watch a movie I watch a movie.
Scope creep commonly happens when there’s no clearly defined scope or vision that keeps the scope in place. Star Citizen clearly suffers from this. It’s a space sim game where seemingly anything goes.
I’m mostly working in Java now. I’m proficient to the degree that I can solve most things without looking for reference online. I think that matters most to me.
OO languages typically use garbage collector. The main purpose of the borrow checker is to resolve the ambiguity of who is responsible for deallocating the data.
In GC languages, there’s usually no such ambiguity. The GC takes care of it.
Sounds like you’re thinking more about the builder pattern.
Mainstream statically-typed OOP allows straightforward backwards compatible evolution of types, while keeping them easy to compose. I consider this to be one of the killer features of mainstream statically-typed OOP, and I believe it is an essential feature for programming with many people, over long periods of time.
I 100% agree with this. The strength of OOP comes with maintaining large programs over a long time. Usually with ever changing requirements.
This is something that’s difficult to demonstrate with small toy examples, which gives OOP languages an unfair disadvantage. Yeah, it might be slower. Yeah, there might be more boilerplate to write. But how does the alternative solutions compare with regards to maintainability?
The main problem with OOP is that maintainability doesn’t necessarily come naturally. It requires lots of experience and discipline to get it right. It’s easy to paint yourself in the corner if you don’t know what you’re doing.
For me it’s the opposite. No money no deal.
In case you’re wondering about the down votes, many think Clean Code is not a good book. It got a few good advice, but it also got bad advice disguised as good advice.
I don’t think switch statements should always be avoided. There are cases where polymorphism makes things more difficult to maintain. Saying polymorphism should be used over switch statements is not a good advice.
Here’s an article going into more detail why we should stop recommending Clean Code: https://qntm.org/clean
For me I have the habit of doing findFirst because determinism is important where I work. But I agree with you if determinism is not of importance.
Looks like it’s JavaScript, but in Java I would prefer to use the Stream API, something like this:
return availableDrivers.stream()
.filter(driver -> calculateDistance(rider, driver) < 5)
.filter(driver -> isPreferredVehicle(rider, driver))
.filter(driver -> meetsRiderPreferences(rider, driver))
.findFirst()
.orElse(null);
Then we have:
private boolean meetsRiderPreferences(Rider rider, Driver driver) {
if (driver.rating >= 4.5) {
if (rider.preferences.includes('Premium Driver')) {
return driver.isPremiumDriver;
} else {
return true;
}
} else if (driver.rating >= 4.0) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
}
This increases the separation of concern in a neat way, and it becomes more clear what the for loop does at a glance (get the first driver satisfying a set of conditions). The more complicated logic is isolated in meetsRiderPreferences, which now only returns true or false. Reading the method is more about making a mental map of a truth table.
It’s also easy to expand the logic (add more filter conditions, sort the drivers based on rating and distance, break out meetsRiderPreferences into smaller methods, etc.).
Not sure how the equivalent in JavaScript would look like, but this is what I would do in Java.
You’re a big function