[racket] off-topic -- Re: Live coding with Racket?

One of my grads called me this morning, from Cambridge/England after trying three times to connect with me yesterday. I hadn't talked to him in 10 years. 

[[ He called to say that (1) his Amazon interviewers loved everything on his CV that I had suggested to him way back -- but that's the unimportant part. Good students know and acknowledge where they learned the relevant stuff. ]]

He called to say (2) that he had been asked to interview 85 people for Amazon recently and that it confirmed all my predictions I had made to him as he grew up with me. These people graduate from "Java is all there is you need to know" so-called universities; they know the syntax; they know the JDK and SDK; they know Eclipse menu entries; they know some keyboard short-cuts; but they don't know any concepts. They can't think. They are unlikely to make a positive contribution and cannot be recommended. 

So perhaps it's not on people's list, but it is on the list of second-level interviewers at shops that understand the value of software. 

-- Matthias







On May 30, 2014, at 1:26 PM, George Rudolph <rudolphg1 at citadel.edu> wrote:

> Matthias,
> The computer science/programmer purist in me agrees with you.
> The pragmatist in me sees though, that "proper coding" is not only not
> a priority for many people, it doesn't even show up on the list
> of things that matter.
> 
> Should it? yes!
> George
> -----Original Message-----
> From: users [mailto:users-bounces at racket-lang.org] On Behalf Of Matthias Felleisen
> Sent: Friday, May 30, 2014 12:57 PM
> To: Nick Shelley
> Cc: users
> Subject: Re: [racket] off-topic -- Re: Live coding with Racket?
> 
> 
> On May 30, 2014, at 12:50 PM, Nick Shelley <nickmshelley at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> the audience that wants to learn and be engaged with minimal reading. Whether that's an audience worth catering to is another question and one I'm not equipped to answer.
> 
> 
> I am absolutely sure you are correct that this audience exists, I am equally sure it's growing, I expect someone will take care of them with spoonfuls of principles that they can eat for dessert, but I won't be me. The best I can hope for is that the person who delivers these bite-size pieces of principles will be informed by my ideas on how to get people to code properly. 
> 
> -- Matthias
> 
> 
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