[PRL] Computer science `education'

[Peter Dillinger]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 12:00:47PM -0800, Joe Marshall wrote:
> Was I expecting too much?  We're all my questions way too hard?  Or did the
> college completely fail in its mission?  Or is the general computer
> science curriculum
> this bad everywhere?

are all your interviews this trite?

sure, you want to know whether the candidate has good vocabulary and
working knowledge of his field, but you can find this out without
making the interview into a quiz.  and there's much more you want to
find out!

rather than asking a "quiz" question about advatanges of functional
programming,  how about giving him several scenarios (e.g. static
analysis tool; one time data conversion; physics simulation) and ask
what language he would prefer to use and why.

how about disassembling something:  ask him to describe in as much
detail as he wants, focusing on the parts he finds most interesting,
the chain of events that happen from pressing Enter in a web browser
(after typing a URL into the address bar) and a web page appearing.

i guess one thing i'm promoting here is to avoid questions that could
lead to an "i don't know" response.  let the person talk about what
they do know.

also, if the point is to find out how well they perform a certain job,
i think that presenting the candidate with scenarios he might
encounter in that job is the most valid way to predict what his
success/productivity would be.  in my internships, i've never had
anyone ask me what alpha-beta pruning is.  everyone i've worked with
was smart enough to look up such things themselves.

on the other hand, i have had people ask me if i could help find the
bug in their code.  i have had people ask for my expert opinion on
how to do something.  i have had people ask for my critique of their
work.

and time doesn't permit asking someone to solve the kinds of multi-week,
multi-month, or multi-year problems he/she will be working on, but you
can ask about problems they've solved before.

my $0.01859 Canadian.

with an addendum!

one could argue that if someone is dedicating brain cells to remembering
stuff he or she is not currently dealing with, he's not meeting his full
potential in terms of reasoning power, creativity, or general
problem-solving ability.  there is some science behind this "finite
capacity" theory, and on the anecdotal front, i find that professors
(my token "smart" and "capable" population for this point) are quick
to purge things they don't need from their memory of "well understood"
things and skilled at doing so.

and one final disclosure:  i've never taken or been offered a job i had
to interview for.  :)

-- 
Peter Dillinger
peterd at gatech.edu
http://www.peterd.org