Programming

It's a term that generally refers to the more 'mathematical' side of programming, as opposed to the more 'practical' side of things. I believe it means 'Data Structures and Algorithm' so its a generalization of 'meaty' programming. Think, someone who writes shell scripts does not need 'DSA' to oil his grind, but someone needing to write a compiler does.

Now we live at an age where you can generate a shell script with a simple prompt, and hell, you could piece-meal a compiler, but it's not as straightforward. If one wishes to make moola in the post-LLM world, one needs to have strong theoretical and constitutional foundation.

At this point, any employer who hires more than 1 person for the 'simple tasks' is doing charity. And charity ain't what employers known for!

That is not to say, don't use AI in your work. I believe AI is the BEST way to learn DSA. In fact I straightened a lot of my misconceptions using ChatGPT. Like, I have written 2 compilers and abandoned them because I never meant to finish them, it was an excuse to prompt ChatGPT with more complex requests and do some reckon on my knowledge. I managed to do 'basic' SSA with ChatGPT, and anyone who has read a compiler book or taken a class knows SSA is not easy. I generated the SSA, and confirmed with the SSA book that I had. IT was very decent. But ther SSA book was very 'crude' and ChatGPT's example was really, well, 'uncrude'? So it was a GIANT help in me understanding SSA.

So if you need to learn DSA, I can recommend these three steps:

1- Learn a functional language or LISP-like language, Scheme, Racket, OCaml, SML, Haskell, etc. These langauges are extremely fluid and scientific.

2- Read books. Just go on Libgen or Zlibrary and read books. I recommended SIpser's above (or was it in another post?) but there's dozens. I remember a book called "Grokking Algorithms" which was really good. I read this book when I was sick with Covid, Steven Skiena's "The Algoritmh Design Manual" and it seems like everyone just LOVES this book. I mean it, try it, it's the best. If you can, buy it, because it's very precious. Also, keep a copy of CSLR/CLSR or whatever as a reference on your desk, PC everywhere.

3- Piece-meal ChatGPT into designing you a complex application. It really helps if you got an aim. One thing I recommend is Genealogy software. Make a Genealogy DSL perhaps. Or a simple compiler.

My advice may not be sound, but some aspects of these were helpful for me.