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by nickjj
1605 days ago
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> Why is it weird that people should spend time preparing for ask for a new job? I mean, ask an orchestra musician how much time they put into preparing for auditions, or how much time many degreed professionals put into passing a certification (e.g. the bar exam or medical boards). It's weird because the preparation is often the thing we're not doing in our day to day. I'd also go as far as saying if you need to cram crazy hours shortly beforehand to pass any exam or test then you're not really qualified to pass. If you were qualified you wouldn't have to do this because you'd already comfortably know the answers. I get wanting to casually review the finer details which is fine, but if you're in "oh crap, it's Tuesday and the test is in 3 days, time to drop my life and cram 10 hours a day to prepare" mode, maybe you're not ready? I also think you can't compare software development to musicians or sports. I do play the guitar and there's a massive amount of muscle memory involved. I've gone a few years without playing in the past but within a few minutes of picking it up somehow my brain can resume where it left off and my hands just move to the right places almost on their own. The same can be said for sports, there's a lot of practice and warming up to burn in muscle memory and literally get your physical body in an optimal state. Also the stuff you're practicing is directly applied to what you're "really" doing in your professional day to day. |
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Tests are different because you are on a timer and they are balanced around it. I almost got straight A's in university, apart from a single B in a course I was confident I actually understood. I got A's in shit I couldn't even begin to explain. But signals and systems, which I genuinely understood at the time, I got a B because I didn't bother studying and memorising shit. I had to work stuff from first principles and ran out of time.
I feel like it's the same in programming interviews. There's no time to actually work out anything from first principles or any original thoughts. Either you know the answer immediately and you spew some shit to make the interviewer happy, or you fail.
Like you say, it's very different for physical activities (can't comment on music), because you cannot drastically increase performance by cramming for a few hours. I was an amateur powerlifter, I stopped training when covid started. There's no way I can get my strength back in 3 days. But I bet I can get an A in some random exam after cramming for 3 days in some random university course I did however many years ago.