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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

> If your preference stops you from learning something as basic as this as a programmer, then it doesn't seem likely that you will be motivated to keep up with even more abstruse concepts.

No one is arguing that there isn't any value in knowing CS. Rather, the argument basically is that for the vast majority of developers, studying algorithms is a net loss because it's time that could be better spent learning more valuable skills.

If you're the person whose job is creating Redis then yeah you should probably know something about about algorithms and data structures. For most other people, having a cocktail party level familiarity with that stuff and a good understanding the phrase "tools not rules" is probably good enough.

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Rather, the argument basically is that for the vast majority of developers, studying algorithms is a net loss because it's time that could be better spent learning more valuable skills.

But the op is basically implying that you don't even need the "cocktail party level familiarity." Knowing just enough first principles chemistry to know how CO2 and CO are produced can save your life. It's one thing to just know the rule you shouldn't run your car in a closed garage. It's another thing to know the general conditions where you might be producing CO, so you also know not to run your laser cutter in a poorly ventilated room.

First principles knowledge are a series of tools for reasoning about the world, your program, your software libraries, etc. Programmers thinking they don't need to know the most basic algorithm knowledge is basically the anti-intellectual stance of eschewing first principles knowledge.

I'm curious to meet these devs that claim that even having a basic understanding of algorithms/data structures fundamentals is not worth their time. Something tells me that the work they do is more related to design/front end and as a consequence they've either never needed to use computer science fundamentals or have been able to get away with naive implementations due to working on trivial problems.

Usually I don't bother engaging in arguments with these people because I know that the standard algorithms interviews will weed these people out so that I never have to deal with them but I've started to notice a trend in more of these people finding their way into the "big 4" type companies and ending up on large scale/infrastructure projects where they end up making very critical mistakes, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700452

I find your stance well considered and it intrigues me because I don't think I agree with it. However I might agree in principle and differ on what exactly it means for someone to know first principles.

I've been through a CS education track, including algorithms and complexity, my day job has been software development for over 5 years since I've graduated college. In practice I have been able to understand complexity tradeoffs when selecting approaches and building implementations and have been able to recognize shortcomings in the same done by others and been able to improve upon what was built. The difficulty I have encountered has never been in the implementation of an algorithm. I have even taught the first principles of complexity to others sufficiently well that I have seen them make informed design decisions.

I will openly admit that not once, during all of that time, have I ever been able to whiteboard an optimally efficient (or nearly so) algorithm implementation _and be confident it was such_. Mind you, I'd love to be able to, and I'm definitely not arguing that understanding complexity isn't useful knowledge. However I would contend that being able to bang out a optimal b-tree implementation from memory on-demand isn't first principles knowledge, but is merely _trivia_ ability.

I would further argue it's not even first principles knowledge that is most important, but rather a combination of critical-thinking, enough self-awareness to notice when you've exceeded your current knowledge/experience, and sufficient humility to fix that lack rather than plod along with blinders on.

Granted, I might be less competent than I believe, but then, in practice, it would seem that incompetence can lead to genuine success. Perhaps the scope of my 5 years real-world experience is so narrow that I've simply not had the chance to encounter a situation where others would say "if you're not able to whiteboard a b-tree, you're not the right person to solve this problem". But then, I'm a full-stack developer that regularly uses Java, Javascript, and Python and have occasionally had reason to use R and C#, so it seems unlikely that my experience is that exceedingly narrow.

Sorry that this became a bit rambling, it's just a topic that's always intrigued me in how divisive it can be.

However I would contend that being able to bang out a optimal b-tree implementation from memory on-demand isn't first principles knowledge, but is merely _trivia_ ability.

a) What the heck is an optimal B-Tree? (Don't you have to tune the parameters? b) I would also contend that it's trivia, and merely a way of getting at the ability to apply First Principles knowledge.

So you're not disagreeing with the value of 1st principles knowledge. Then you cite an even deeper kind of knowledge. Where exactly are we disagreeing here?

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