This is great but the premise seems kind of straw man. I don’t know a single developer that thinks “googling stuff means you’re not a proper engineer.”
Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API syntax. But at the same time I get if you’re trying to assess someone’s aptitude for devising novel algorithms, sometimes a closed book test makes sense.
I think there are many devs (myself included earlier in my career) that push back in the algorithm tests because, well, it’s really hard. How often do you have to derive novel algos? A lot of our work is kind of UI frontends to DBs or gluing things and most of the sort of hard scalable algorithm problems someone else has implemented in a library. So why go through 6 months of really hard study, just to get that kind of job?
Well, I think here should be “maker” roles where you can bypass the hard CS stuff and just crank code, if you have an impressive portfolio of work. But having a deep understanding of data structures (not just arrays and maps) and algorithms really gives you a mastery of your craft, especially around performance and scalability.
Nobody should be screened out because they didn’t remember a particular bit of syntax though. (But it should be noted most algo tests don’t require anything but the language basics.)
Perhaps this is a reference to the interviewing process. Tests are a different thing, though. I’ve been on practical technical screens where you can google, because the test was about building a larger system, and they don’t care if you don’t remember this or that API syntax. But at the same time I get if you’re trying to assess someone’s aptitude for devising novel algorithms, sometimes a closed book test makes sense.
I think there are many devs (myself included earlier in my career) that push back in the algorithm tests because, well, it’s really hard. How often do you have to derive novel algos? A lot of our work is kind of UI frontends to DBs or gluing things and most of the sort of hard scalable algorithm problems someone else has implemented in a library. So why go through 6 months of really hard study, just to get that kind of job?
Well, I think here should be “maker” roles where you can bypass the hard CS stuff and just crank code, if you have an impressive portfolio of work. But having a deep understanding of data structures (not just arrays and maps) and algorithms really gives you a mastery of your craft, especially around performance and scalability.
Nobody should be screened out because they didn’t remember a particular bit of syntax though. (But it should be noted most algo tests don’t require anything but the language basics.)