Comment by tester756 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tester756 | Hacker News Reader

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In my opinion "program better" (or actually better at system modeling)

requires way more time, way more examples, way more code written.

I believe that in order to be "somewhat decent" at leetcode (not top level competitor)

you just need to learn theory, techniques, tricks and get some practice.

Meanwhile in order to get better at system modeling you need to model a lot of systems from scratch, change them and see how your initial design supported that refactor part

You need to be aware of various approaches / architectures, yada yada

And generally spend a lot of time thinking about how it'll affect readability or easiness to get into the project for new ppl, scalability, extensibility, etc.

So, in generally I believe that leetcode is just learn theory, practice everything you learned and go ahead and do 50 / 100 tasks

If you fail, then you can check answers and learn from them

meanwhile there are no correct answers for system modeling.

Additionally for leetcode you have sets with tasks to practice, meanwhile the "real" system modeling experience comes from real projects where requirements are being thrown and changed by somebody else whenever he/she wants

____________

>I don't know how one can study leetcode and fail to learn to program better.

I don't see how even hundreds of hours on leetcode would make you better at OOP, system modeling, building abstractions.

> I don't see how even hundreds of hours on leetcode would make you better at OOP, system modeling, building abstractions.

Because you know the foundations.

Knowing how a compiler works all the way down makes me a better programmer. Knowing assembler makes me a better high level language programmer. Knowing in detail how a car works makes me a better driver. Knowing how electricity works at the low level prevented a very costly mistake by the electrician who was wiring it (he had no idea). Knowing chemistry prevented a very costly mistake by the roofer of my house.

More about algorithm questions vs system modeling:

I'm thinking that

1) getting good at algorithms takes less time, than getting good at system modeling. — One will see one's mistakes sooner, within minutes, compared to system modeling, in which case one would need to stay at a workplace for months or years, to see how a system design eventually turned out to be a mistake?

But 2) it's also harder to get good at hard algorithm questions — most people won't get that good at it, also with weeks and months of practice. And they still wouldn't have any real chance in a Google coding interview.

And in that way, algorithm questions make sense?

They give more information about the person's ability to think and learn — good for the company —

and takes less time for the candidate to get good at (weeks or months — compared to working for years?), good for the candidate?

(I'm someone else than GP)

PS. I wonder what the electrician was up to? :- ) and the other one

Out of curiosity, what knowledge about electricity and chemistry did you have that prevented the mistakes?

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