> I like to tell juniors confused about file types, that file types are a social construct, they're just a bag of bytes with some structure.
I always get confused about what the hiring landscape looks like. How is it that people are grinding leetcode or whatever just to get into places, but still have those kinds of gaps in fundamental understanding?
I'm not in a field where leetcode is the deciding factor but there's similar gamified focuses. The idea being you can pick out self-motivated autodidacts with those kinds of challenges/experience in the challenges, then fill in the connective tissue later.
This was just one example of a capable intern who was tripped up by file types.
Because even prior to LLMs, “knows how to program” and “understands computers” could be disjoint. I worked with someone who didn’t understand how to find what was consuming their disk space, nor how to fix it, or most egregiously, that they needed to empty the Trash (MacOS) to actually reclaim the disk space.
I always get confused about what the hiring landscape looks like. How is it that people are grinding leetcode or whatever just to get into places, but still have those kinds of gaps in fundamental understanding?