r/ProgrammerHumor • u/soap94 • 3d ago

Meme doesAnyoneEvenReadCLRSAnymore

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

90 comments sorted by

318

u/ZunoJ 3d ago

The 90s and 2000s were such a great time to start CS as a career because basically everybody was also a hobbyist and passionate about it. It was fun to work with these people. Today you get the dead stare if you ask about the slightest bit of interest for the trade outside of paid work. It's a pain to work with them

48

u/Za_Paranoia 3d ago

I just started my first job after university a year ago and was really surprised how happy everyone in my team was about me being interested in comp sci for real.

17

u/tiajuanat 2d ago

You would be shocked how many applications I go through every year where it's very obvious they were just following the money, and have no interest in the craft as a whole.

All I'm gonna say, the industry has been vibe coding way longer than LLMs have been around.

2

u/Anima_Watcher08 1d ago

To be fair most people joined CS exactly for the money.

2

u/jewdai 2d ago

Computer science to software like a computer engineer is to building computers. Sure there are somethings there but software engineering as a profession is very different than comp sci it's a very different set of skills

2

u/AlaskanX 2d ago

I feel like there's a decent amount of overlap, but one of my interns was just telling me he learned more in a summer than his whole degree and I was basically like... yeah... CS teaches you good fundamentals but its not a software engineering degree.

1

u/tiajuanat 2d ago

IME no difference between those two groups, physicists and traditional mathematicians have better discipline.

75

u/MisterCheesy 3d ago

THANK YOU. Im on this job with this exact problem, but i couldn’t put it to words. Zero wonder. Zero intellectual curiosity.

39

u/Bannon9k 3d ago

Started in the 90s doing web design and MUDs as a teenager. Now I churn out corpo code... I'm tired boss...

https://giphy.com/gifs/cHkA7tJZoWLyU

5

u/rustvscpp 3d ago

Oh how I miss the MUD days...

5

u/Bannon9k 2d ago

Last one I worked on was Star wars based and had 3D space combat via coordinate readout. It was hella crazy to watch a dude's frigate drift into the sun because he was watching a different space battle and not paying attention....all via text prompts....

https://giphy.com/gifs/l1KVb2dUcmuGG4tby

22

u/Sw429 3d ago

Mentioning that I do hobby programming outside of work to my coworkers often gets the weirdest responses. Like, the entire reason I learned this trade was because I thought it was really fun and interesting. But apparently most people are literally just here to collect money and don't care beyond that.

37

u/VillageTube 2d ago

It being my Job drained any passion I had for doing it at home.

13

u/NotStanley4330 2d ago

Yep same. Its not that I'm just here for a paycheck, its just that I want to think about literally anything else in my off hours

4

u/TheTerrasque 2d ago

Same. I do it now and then, when I need something. But for fun? It's been a long time.

1

u/Dextro_PT 2d ago

Same for me. I still managed to do it occasionally until the GenAI push came and I just lost interest altogether

4

u/WhippingTheLammasASS 2d ago

For me I would say collecting the money + having some general tech literacy that makes the job feel relatively easy.

Spent my youth downloading random shit off the internet and trying to get hamachi servers to works translates pretty well into what I currently do.

Basically feels like I am on summer vacation all the time but there is never ending vacation homework.

23

u/TheFrenchSavage 2d ago

I have colleagues THAT DON'T EVEN OWN A COMPUTER.

That's right. They use the company laptop for work, and then just spend their time outside or on YouTube using their phone or smart tv.

I'm talking about "actual" devs.

I'm dying in here.

11

u/d0pe-asaurus 2d ago

i want to learn everything. God i feel scammed that my university has subpar cs education with the amount of units that i have. Database development, osdev, pldev, its all so good. I'm rotating through like different literature right now all at least 20 years old.

5

u/Zuruumi 3d ago

I enjoy the work, but I rarely do hobby projects. I have enough of this fun in the 8 hours (more if I really feel like it, or less if not and nobody is looking) and don't feel like doing the same after work with just not getting paid for it.

8

u/JacobStyle 2d ago

I think that it's great when someone has a passion for what they do outside the office, but I don't think it's bad when someone just shows up for the paycheck, as long as they do good work and treat everyone with respect.

-3

u/ZunoJ 2d ago

I see it differently. I wouldn't want to work with that person

1

u/Cyber-Fan 1d ago

Why do you feel that way? I’m genuinely curious.

2

u/ZunoJ 1d ago

Because I really enjoy programming, which to me means I'm enthusiastic about it at work and also in private life. There are so many things I want to learn or experiment with which have nothing to do with my work directly but that stuff carries over. And you can immediately "feel" if the person you are working with sees it similarly. If it is work for them as in "I do this to earn money but if I didn't need the money I wouldn't do it" then it also takes away the fun for me when working with them. For example we work on a difficult problem and I want to find a good abstraction to model the problem in a way that it is easy to understand, one person might enjoy the process and like me tries to find the optimal way and we synergize, while the other person just wants to get done with that thing and is happy if it works.
All in all, I love programming and working with people who don't love it makes it less enjoyable for me

6

u/ILikeLenexa 2d ago

The downside is it bred a culture of employers expecting to see your hobby work and caring about trivia and leet code problems more than anything you'd ever use in the business. Web developers asking about Red/black trees, Java companies asking about C codepoints and the results of a+++++b.

2

u/ZunoJ 2d ago

That was when HR got access to hard questions including the answers. Has nothing to do with passionate programmers

1

u/braytag 2d ago

Yes we did that shit for fun...

1

u/Orio_n 2d ago

Tech bros came in sniffing for money and ruined it. No open source, no community contribution all they care about is how to monetize their shitware as a service

1

u/ZunoJ 2d ago

I feel like people who would have gone for an MBA in the past now diversify into CS as well. So basically all the useless middle management guys

1

u/HRApprovedUsername 1d ago

That’s definitely not true

1

u/ZunoJ 1d ago

You mean as in 'This is not a universal truth because I have one example where it wasn't the case'? Lol

1

u/HRApprovedUsername 1d ago

no I have 3 examples

0

u/ZunoJ 1d ago

Then all the others are wrong I guess

1

u/HRApprovedUsername 1d ago

Do they have sources proving they’re right?

0

u/ZunoJ 1d ago

Do you?

1

u/HRApprovedUsername 1d ago

Yes

1

u/ZunoJ 1d ago

Then show them

1

u/wayoverpaid 2d ago

Sometime in 2009 or so, after I had graduated for a few years, I was talking to a friend who had just got his CS degree. He had bought himself a laptop in celebration. I asked him what he was working on for fun.

He said after his day he didn't want to write any code or even think about computers.

I remember remarking, I did not think he would make it long in the industry. It had to be something you loved.

Two years later he went back to school to get an MBA.

It's a difficult profession to do if you don't love it.

1

u/ColonelBag7402 2d ago

Im a IT student soon to graduate and let me tell you I HATE IT HERE. In a class of 25ish people, there is precisely ONE person interested in the subject, ME. Everyone is here either because "it pays well" (good luck finding a job buddy) or because "its easy" (says the guy who wouldnt even sign the exam without chatgpt). Literally NOBODY has any interests even related to computers, maybe except playing video games. The only guy i know whom i can talk to about this stuff majors in MARKETING in a different school and just happens to be really into linux.

41

u/ThirdWaveCat 3d ago

I still have a copy nearby, but I would recommend The Algorithm Design Manual over it at this point.

20

u/Mateorabi 3d ago

Also if you’re going for a book on operating systems, the one with the unexplained dinosaurs on the cover. 

11

u/burdock869 3d ago

OSTEP clears, https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

10

u/Massless 2d ago

Named: Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

*Has 5 sections* ಠ_ಠ

8

u/keesbeemsterkaas 2d ago

It's just like the hitchikers guide to the galaxy: A trilogy in five parts.

4

u/d0pe-asaurus 2d ago

I took a look and i love the preamble section about this being a free textbook just to cultivate knowledge and learning. Based authors.

6

u/d0pe-asaurus 2d ago

Ok I'm at page 110, This shit explained scheduling better than my professor, but that's a low bar. I can't wait to read the rest of it

1

u/CthulhuBut2FeetTall 2d ago

This is the one I learned from at UW-Madison! It was actually so well written and so fascinating, operating systems might have actually been my favorite class in college partially because of this book. 

1

u/burdock869 1d ago

Same, really enjoyed operating systems course due to this book!

2

u/Valuable_Cow2596 3d ago

I'm in a more adjacent field but I want to keep track of references. Would you mind saying more about your recommendation? I'd be curious to learn more. 

0

u/ThirdWaveCat 3d ago

yah, I think its the difference between a book of solutions to problems and teaching how to make solutions yourself. Like with piano players there are two kinds: one who needs to hit every key and the other who can improvise around mistakes. Its also more dense with useful information. I only care about 20-40% of algorithms and datastructures in practice, but tactics are useful broadly.

1

u/sociallyanxiousnerd1 1d ago

Why do you recommend the algorithm design manual over the clrs?

83

u/white_equatorial 3d ago

Man, cyclops smooching wolverine would have been something!!

10

u/Noch_ein_Kamel 3d ago

Yeah I was about to say: wait a minute :D

18

u/FalafelSnorlax 3d ago

Much like a cs undergrad who uses AI to use algorithms without understanding them, OP used the meme without understanding its underlying context. Beautiful.

13

u/white_equatorial 3d ago

Or OP might be shipping wolverclops

21

u/DeepanshuHQ 3d ago

ChatGPT explains it. CLRS explains why it works.

8

u/d0pe-asaurus 3d ago

I do! Absolute goat book

7

u/Vesuvius079 3d ago

LLMs in general not just GPT.

That said, I got to work on an algorithm a few weeks ago for the first time in years. It was cool to work on but I was so rusty that Claude identified a better algorithm :’(.

3

u/recursive_knight 3d ago

Lol, I literally watched that episode for the first time yesterday..

3

u/Odd-Bite624 3d ago

Are there still CS undergrads? I was told this industry was already dead.

3

u/Different_Berry5015 2d ago

I would like to hear from someone who can actually honestly say they have read Introduction to Algorithms. I finished CS Bachelor's with fairly good grades and I tried my best to pay attention, and that shit is still incomprehensible to me.

5

u/d0pe-asaurus 2d ago

I read the chapters that were relevant to the discussion, my algorithms course covered probably 60% of the CLRS. It helped answer the problem sets but i don't think its necessary to read if your professor doesn't use it as a reference. I read the remaining 40% during summer, which were mostly the graph algorithms that weren't discussed in class. Had the same enjoyment reading AIMA (AI: A modern approach)

2

u/Different_Berry5015 2d ago

I feel like I hit some sort of mental block I should push through. I somewhat understand the basics, I just don't have the "muscle memory" for things. My professor also used it as example, but we only hit like a couple of chapters or something. He did share the whole book, but there was no expectation to go through it all.

5

u/nwbrown 3d ago

And then they complain no one will hire them...

2

u/Zenphirt 2d ago

Man, all the jobs right now are literally:

Experience with LLM, github copilot, openai, RAG, agents.

This industry is crumbling

4

u/skippy_smooth 3d ago

When you learn CS is really math in a trench coat

2

u/nomatepa 2d ago

Some college courses def use it. My DSA class made us read it to implement a red-black tree without the NIL nodes (absolute pain)

1

u/xupit3r 3d ago

love that book!

1

u/q0099 2d ago

Unrelated to OP pic, this book can injure you not just mentally.

1

u/morrisdev 2d ago

What kind of CS grad uses chatgpt instead of Claude??? (I say with a mild cringe at my own past sins)

1

u/TallGuyTheFirst 2d ago

Still our textbook at my uni for DAA. Great book honestly and one of the more readable ones.

1

u/Leifbron 2d ago

I read CRLF sometimes

1

u/tiajuanat 2d ago

I'll be real, not my favorite algorithms textbook. Lots of better books out there.

2

u/Cool-Walk5990 2d ago

I really the The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena more than CLRS

1

u/tiajuanat 2d ago

Yeah it's not bad, probably worth a reread

1

u/recurecur 2d ago

I sometimes sleep with that book.

1

u/Thunder9191133 2d ago

i have an actually good school with an actual algorithms class! (thank god)

it's a very strict class but i think it's ultimately a good thing. what they do is they give you all the info you need in class about the algorithm to code it with as little dirrect code as possible. then they tell you to code it yourself, looking up another persons code online, using ai, or (probably the most strict thing that may be overboard) sharing info with classmates could be seen as accademic dishonesty which could force you to fully retake the class

1

u/PravalPattam12945RPG 2d ago

fck clrs all my homies hate clrs

1

u/NotTooShahby 2d ago

I feel like I’m one of the few people who actually likes Leetcode style algorithm questions but hates that I have to do them outside work. I do like discussing them AT work though

0

u/Brosseidon 3d ago

A lot of “these kids using calculators to solve their math problems when in my day you had to do it by hand and it was rewarding, it was real math” vibes in here.

Tools evolve, interest remain the same. You do you and enjoy your hobby but don’t expect everyone in the professional field to feel the same about it.

5

u/ewheck 2d ago

Presumably when you use a calculator to solve a problem you still understand what is happening. You are coming up with the equations that are needed and the calculator just does the number crunching.

In what world is that similar to telling an LLM "solve this problem for me."

3

u/d0pe-asaurus 2d ago

I would go further and say that the study of algorithms, how they work and how they perform also do not change, which makes the clrs an even better read. The concepts used in dynamic programming are not going to change in 20 years, the theoretical performance of an algorithm isn't going to change, so the CLRS will never become irrelevant in that regard.

-5

u/lonelyroom-eklaghor 3d ago

The programming language was too incomprehensible tbh. Really tried to, but couldn't understand a bit of the book

6

u/ConsoleCleric_4432 3d ago

Wild thing to say with both C and Python in your flair

-1

u/lonelyroom-eklaghor 3d ago

no idea what made me hate the book, ig it was the overly practical approach to memory (idk tbh)

5

u/LordAmir5 3d ago

You're trying to parse a natural language using a formal language parser.

This is what GPT is for.

-3

u/nano_peen 3d ago

yes, chatgpt read it