Comment by fhennig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fhennig | Hacker News Reader

This is a very interesting thing to think about, I thought about it a bunch of times already, and have a couple of thoughts about it too.

First of all, once you're 55, it's easy to say stuff like that, because you won't be tested anymore. And I think there is a good chunk of survivorship bias: "Hey, I made it without worrying about tests, so you can, too!" Although that is probably not true for a big chunk of the population, especially once we look at non CS people.

Then I think, he is fundamentally right. Grades shouldn't matter so much, it is about what you learn. And I like to approach things that way too, but in the end, I always have to study for the tests as well.

The problem is exactly how deeply it is ingrained in everything. If I just stop caring, it doesn't really help. I will just end up in a worse position, since everyone around me still cares about test results. The people that need to change their mind are the people that use tests as measures of qualities that they are not a good measure for. I think a lot of people are falling thought the cracks because they don't fit the expectation of a HR person close enough.

In the end, we will always have to have tests. A completely individualized assessment of peoples qualities or fit for certain roles just doesn't scale. It would be great though to come up with new ways of testing that are maybe more in line with actual learning. For example, it would be nice to have tests at university where I can google things, just like in the real world.

I am lucky enough to be able to work in the booming tech sector where there are so many jobs that it is fine if I don't work towards a test.

> For example, it would be nice to have tests at university where I can google things, just like in the real world.

One of the best professors I had at university for a Linux course always said: “If you don’t know something, google it!”

He backed up his words by allowing googling on the actual coding part of his exams. You had to understand the underlying concepts but you never had to memorize syntax. One time, he had us write a small program in C that involved threading during a proctored timed exam. Everyone ran out of time for that part.

His course and exams were _rigorous_. You could never cram for his class and expect to pass and indeed I know of one student repeatedly failing his course.

This was one of the courses in university where I gained the bulk of my useful knowledge and practical skills I use to this day. I can count the courses that were of similar quality I took at university on one(1) hand. The rest of my degree involved hackable tests, apathetic professors and were massive time-wasters. I learned nothing from them, obviously.

The good professors made me realize how bad the rest of my degree was and how much of a racket higher education could be.

I look back at my undergrad days and wonder how much more I would have learned if I had not focused so much on grades. I’m still actively trying to unschool myself.

> He backed up his words by allowing googling on the actual coding part of his exams. You had to understand the underlying concepts but you never had to memorize syntax. ... His course and exams were _rigorous_. You could never cram for his class and expect to pass and indeed I know of one student repeatedly failing his course.

When I studied law, all our exams were open book. Bring whatever you want. I brought casebooks and printouts of legislation and important cases. Others also brought headnotes and volumes of Halsbury's (a legal encyclopaedia).

None of this helped if you didn't know the material well enough to identify the legal issues in each question.

Which is why I failed Torts.

> None of this helped if you didn’t know the material well enough to identify the legal issues in each question.

My machine learning professor who was from CMU would allow us to put anything we wanted on both sides of one piece of printer paper to bring to exams.

No amount of notes helped if you had no understanding of the algorithms and formulas.

I almost failed that course too, but it was also one of the cornerstones of my university career. It made me realize how much I had been optimizing for the wrong thing: grades instead of understanding.

>"Hey, I made it without worrying about tests, so you can, too!"

To be fair he did say "For me, as for most students, the measurement of what I was learning completely dominated actual learning in college. I was fairly earnest; I was genuinely interested in most of the classes I took, and I worked hard. And yet I worked by far the hardest when I was studying for a test."

>I think a lot of people are falling thought the cracks because they don't fit the expectation of a HR person close enough.

In retrospect I'm sure this was the case for me. It's probably why I ended up starting my own business.

> The problem is exactly how deeply it is ingrained in everything

You can you use "test" as a proxy for the impression you want to make on your boss and peers. Maybe even friends and family.

It's up to you to redefine that test (or create a complementary one) based on your own goals and your own timeline.

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