jobhdez

Hello, so I’m just curious what it takes to be a great backend engineer.

What CS knowledge do you need to understand?

What are some backend engineer fundamentals?

And in terms of actual practice l, what technologies/ languages should someone know if they want to be a great backend engineer? Thanks

Hello you all. I find backend web engineering interesting especially the infrastructure such as http and tcp protocols, key value stores, cache, message queues and so on. I’ve done some toy web services but personally and I’m curious about the event driven nature of node. I find node actually interesting. I have tried Django but don’t find Django intellectually stimulating at all.

So could you tell me what you do as a backend engineer and what are the challenging and interesting problems you have to solve?

I have googled this of course but I get the same crap so I’d like to ask people here because I think I’ll get better answers. Thanks for your time. Merry Christmas

Hello, Hope all is well. I love math but haven’t studied much of it.

I have only studied up to real analysis. But definitely not a whole semester worth; my experience with analysis has been analogous to Poor performance in a quarter based analysis course. I did some exercises but not many.

I have heard from an mit professor[1] that math is the way to learn to think rigorously. So I’m curious about this and I’d like to improve my thinking skills in the hope that I will become a better programmer.

In an article a math professor said that there was some evidence that math improved logical skills[2].

So I’m wondering if any of you noticed that your thinking skills improved thereby making you a better programmer after studying analysis or topology or some other proof based math course.

Also which math other than the math required in CS programs should one study to be a better programmer and thinker? Thanks [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZF0MFm9pqw&pp=ygUTQWR2aWNlIHJ1c3MgdGVkcmFrZQ%3D%3D [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/opinion/sunday/math-logic-smarter.html

I have been on a journey of studying compilers and despite only knowing some of the basics and despite writing only a few small compilers, my compiler studies have been illuminating. I feel like I have a much deeper understanding than I use to about the programming languages that I use and I am starting to visualize how high level programming constructs such as arrays, tuples, if statements, if expressions, loops, lexical scoped functions, tail calls, type checker get compiled to x86 which in turn has given me a better feel for how the cpu executes the compiled program. It has also been worthwhile because I have a better understanding of how memory is laid out in a process and how your high level program uses this memory.

I think compilers are really fundamental software systems.

I encourage you to build a compiler yourself. Its really fun

Hello,

I have seen a lot of people on the internet say that the dragon book is horrible book to learn compilers from.

well, I have read some of the second edition of the dragon book and I think it is a great book. The main criticism is that its too focused on parsing. Thats just like 5 chapters. I skipped these and went straight into the intermediate language, code generation, and optimizing chapters.

These chapters give a detailed account of things such as register allocation, instruction selection, and instruction scheduling. The optimizing chapters are also good.

im not claiming im an expert compiler person. I am not but compilers is something i want to learn and so i gave the dragon book a try and i really liked it.

more importantly the dragon book made me realize that compilers are mathematical systems in a way. the ast is tree and trees have mathematical properties but graphs are needed for register allocation, dataflow analysis for optimization. optimization is math problem.

So i think this book gave me a better understanding of the field and it made appreciate compilers.

i'd say if youre interested in compilers you can start with "essence of compilation" by dr. siek and get some experience writing compilers and then read the dragon book.

i just wanted to share my experience. i think the dragon book is a great book.

Hello,

I thing compilers are very interesting. I have built my own compilers in common lisp and I enjoyed my time. I basically almost completed a university quarter compiler project based on Dr. Siek's book "Essentials of Compilation". I did almost eveything a student would do in a quarter system except for implementing tuples and register allocation. One of my plans is to build a more substantial compiler, study the second edition of the dragon book and either contribute to llvm or the haskell compiler.

how likely is it to get a compiler job if i contribute to llvm or ghc for a year regularly?

thanks.

Should I contribute to open source before my first software engineering job so I can get experience working on a large unfamiliar codebase? Like experience adding features and fixing bugs. Thanks

Hello,

I am writing a Scheme to C compiler right now and I am loving it. But I want to build a production compiler. what are some problems right now, that badly need a solution, that can be solved with a compiler? Thanks

What are the state of art optimizing techniques for compilers?

If you either mention techniques used in functional languages or I imperative or both I will appreciated. If you can point to research papers you’re the best :)

Hello guys and ladies,

I’m a self taught programmer who has been getting software engineering interviews. I’m applying to Software Engineering jobs that require little to no experience. I’ve studied SICP and HtDP. I have also studied Proofs and CLRS. So as you can see I have studied almost the core of a CS degree.

I have build some math systems in Lisp and Python but nothing great. 600 lines of code or less. Lately I’ve been doing web dev with Django and react. I have built a full stack web with these. So I’ve built a rest api and a frontend to consume this api.

Should I keep applying and just practice leetcode type of problems? Or should I study OS and Software construction from ocw mit? I am also interested in compilers. Should I do these first or can I keep applying to roles? That’s my debate right now. Thanks