[nzoschke]

Agree LeetCode is one of the least surprising starting points.

Any human that reads the LeetCode books and practices and remembers the fundamentals will pass a LeetCode test.

But there is also a ton of code out there for highly scalable client/servers, low latency processing, performance optimizations and bug fixing. Certainly GPT it is being trained on this too.

“Find a kernel bug from first principles” maybe not, but analyze a file and suggest potential bugs and fixes and other optimizations absolutely. Particularly when you chain it into a compiler and test suite.

Even the best human engineers will look at the code in front of them, consult Google and SO and papers and books and try many things iteratively until a solution works.

GPT speedruns this.

[somsak2]

> Any human that reads the LeetCode books and practices and remembers the fundamentals will pass a LeetCode test.

Seems pretty bold to claim "any human" to me. If it were that easy, don't you think alot more people would be able to break into software dev at FAANG and hence drive salaries down?

[wadd1e]

I don't think the person you're replying meant "Any human" to be taken literally, but I agree with their notion. I think you're confusing wanting to do something and having the ability to do it. Enough people don't WANT to grind leetcode and break into FAANG, or they think they can't do it or there's other barriers that I can't think of, but I think you don't need above average cognitive ability to learn and grind leetcode.

[cudgy]

Just because a job pays well, doesn’t mean it’s worth doing. Most FAANG jobs (now that the companies have become modern day behemoths like IBM) are boring cogs in a huge, multilayered, bureaucratic machine that is mostly built to take advantage of their users.

It takes a “special” kind of person to want those type of jobs and live in a company town like SF while they’re at it.

[IncRnd]

> Seems pretty bold to claim "any human" to me.

That's obviously not what they claimed. Your quote, "Any human that reads the LeetCode books and practices and remembers the fundamentals".