undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjemfinch14y ago0 comments

If you need a compiler and a debugger to implement Pascal's triangle, you're simply not a good programmer. Good programmers write code. They don't just mash keys and wait for a compiler to tell them what to fix.

Any programmer I want to work with will be able to walk up to a whiteboard and write a program to print a row of Pascal's triangle or a function that determines whether one string contains another. Simple programming problems like this are the tiny problems we solve on a daily basis; if you can't implement such trivial functions without bugs, how can you expect to design or implement multi-kloc systems without bugs?

0 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

jebblue14y ago· 1 in thread

I don't write code on a whiteboard, you might be comfortable thinking like that, I for one am not. I think it's likely that I'm in the majority.

Until I get a keyboard with a tappety tap tap under my fingers my brain is at all stop.

jemfinchOP14y ago

Software engineering is an interactive endeavor most of the time. My regular day-to-day work often involves getting in front of a whiteboard with another engineer or two and drawing pictures, writing code, iteratively designing things, etc. If you can't think in front of a whiteboard, your working process may not be a good match, at least not for me.

ootachi14y ago

What an insulting and belittling post. As others have pointed out, the Pascal's triangle problem is dependent on intuition regarding the characteristics of the triangle that happen to be the most useful for solving the problem (in this case, that the sides consist of 1s). Moreover, the statement "Good programmers write code. They don't just mash keys and wait for a compiler to tell them what to fix." is ridiculous: not only are you discounting a very useful way to refactor code (change stuff and let the error messages guide you), but every programmer also makes stupid mistakes, and I don't consider that a measure of programmer quality. Maybe 10% of the quality of a programmer is his or her ability to avoid stupid mistakes in the first place; the other 90% that represents real business value is the ability to understand and diagnose mistakes when they do make them.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse