iobt92

Hi HN. As the title suggests, a typical CS undergraduate (freshman) is hoping to looking for some ways to boost my technical/non-technical skills over the summer. I know that many may suggest looking for an internship, but due to personal reasons I am not looking to pursue one for this summer alone. As such, I was hoping anyone could possibly suggest interesting projects I could work on which most importantly balances practicality with interest (i.e. should ideally help to gain some relevant 'workforce' skills, while being something which I may not have the chance to in an actual job).

Suggestions such as diving into operating systems, learning about distributed systems are appreciated, but would hopefully take a backseat as I believe I will have time to dive deep into them when they come around in my curriculum over the next few years. A detailed suggestion in a past thread [1] suggested learning/implementing Git from scratch. I like this idea and am planning on at least gaining a deeper than average understanding of Git, but was looking for more variety across different domains other than version control systems.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19642190

Hi all, I've been reading the recently published book by David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Putting aside the kind/unkind learning environment debate, what do you think breadth/diversification looks like for programmers? What does it mean for a programmer to 'develop broad perspectives' in order to help them better solve problems? Would this entail venturing into different, perhaps even unconventional domains (graphics, hardware)? Or simply reading widely outside of tech/CS topics in general (economics, biology, etc)? What do you guys think?

Hi HN, I have an interview lined up for a data science (intern) position in about two weeks time. This is after I passed an initial take-home assessment testing Python (Pandas) and basic SQL. I received comments from the HR staff that my SQL 'could do some brushing up', which I expected since I had never really worked with it beforehand. He also informed me upfront that the interview in 2 weeks time would 'grill' me on SQL by more experienced and software oriented members of the team.

How should I go about better securing my odds of passing the interview? Previously, I worked through the excellent exercises at https://pgexercises.com/ and am planning to at least go through the introduction for the Stanford Databases course. Are there any other resources (books, online tutorials with exercises) that I could go through in this short span of time which would help me learn as much as possible?

(if it helps, I find that I am still weak on window functions and best practices when it comes to complex queries)

Hi all,

basically the title says it all. I'm currently a CS student working towards my Bachelor's. Since I have plenty of free time (for the most part), I was thinking of picking up other skills/domains to further my prospects of acquiring an internship/job once I graduate.

I was thinking along the lines of:

  1. Learning about other topics such as security, distributed systems, graphics which I may not have the chance to formally take a course on (given limited elective choices).

  2. Developing expertise in a particular development 'domain', e.g. web development, mobile development through various side projects.

Otherwise, I was thinking of devoting the extra time to going more in-depth than what the module may demand i.e. dive into the textbooks/relevant material and cover content beyond what may be officially covered by the course, but I am not sure to what ends this will help to improve my skillset. What do you guys think?

Hey all, this question is mainly directed towards long-term/experienced programmers who have had a decent career/equivalent experience with regards to developing software and creating non-trivial programs in general. In your opinion, which are the few programming ideas or concepts absolutely crucial to program design often missed out by majority of programmers?

When writing this question, I actually had the skill set of a programmer more in mind. I believe that is widely recognized that the role of a programmer is to solve programs, and hence focusing one's efforts on purely gaining theoretical knowledge may not have such a great ROI (depending on your goals). Yet, it may not be as straightforward to conclude that one's programming skill has 'improved' compared to reading theory and as a result concluding that one is 'more knowledgeable'. So my question would be, how do you assess that your 'problem-solving' abilities have improved over time?

I'm a budding undergraduate awaiting enrollment this year. I've already started to get into programming, and am nearing the end of a ML internship. I really admire people with robust programming skills and hope that I can become one of them (hopefully by the end of university). I wanted to ask, what steps can I take to help me work towards that goal? (I was thinking along the lines of daily deliberate practice, but what would be most efficient?).