u/artificial-cardigan

i'd like to start off saying i love the Legend of Zelda franchise and have ever since i played Twilight Princess when i was 8. when i first played breath of the wild in 2021, it felt like i was discovering video games for the first time and everything about the game seemed wonderfully intentional and for the most part worked very well with the other aspects in the game.

i played totk a bit a few years ago when it released but didn't play after i beat the wind temple. recently i decided to sit down and play through it, and i beat the game while doing most of all side quests and doing 110 shrines.

this game is an improvement in some cases from breath of the wild but i will say there is a lot to the game that i felt makes it not great which is a bit disappointing.

i think BotW is an amazing game because it doesn't assume you have any familiarity with most video games, let alone LoZ. the handholding was great, not too excessive but definitely great for new players. certain combat shrines were naturally on your way when you followed the main quest lines.

i think that TotK is a much more difficult if not frustrating game to play throughout without metagaming. a lot of combat shrines are not directly on a path that you'd find most intuitive and even the idea of upgrading your armor is borderline esoteric. if you didn't know it was a thing, in BotW it was pretty straighforward because the quest brings you to Kakariko village and from what i remember, it's pretty straightforward to discover the mechanic. you learn about it before going to any of the divine beasts.

in TotK how is someone who doesn't even know about armor upgrading supposed to come about figuring it out? yes, it's a relatively simple quest if you just go to the right stable but the stable is in the opposite direction that most people go when doing the main quest. and on top of that, it's completely normal for someone to just pass through stables without engaging all the quests and dialogues.

there were other moments aside from this where i really thought "how would you have known to do this unless you didn't metagame it or play BotW". you can say that in this case you SHOULD play BotW before playing TotK, but a big part that i love about LoZ is that you DON'T have to play any of the other games to enjoy one.

i also found the dragon tears quest to be less put together compared to gathering memories because the dragon tears quest actually has a very linear storyline so experiencing the memories in the random order that you do can really make some memories less meaningful because you got "spoiled". compare this towards BotW the memories did have a linear timeline but the type of memories was more exposition to the different parts of the world.

finally, i was very underwhelmed by the final boss fight. don't get me wrong. i love the cutscene of ganondorf and what he said, flawless cutscene, but the fight was SO underwhelming. granted using the master sword with a silver lynel blade literally cuts through him like butter, but i thought maybe there would be a difficulty scaling?

there's no reason that i should be able to kill the final boss in 2 flurry rushes with no potions. i also never upgraded my armor and didn't have to heal up during the fights. no i had no defensive potions. i straight up had the champion leathers, hylian trousers, and hair tye all level 1 for drip purposes and killed him in 2 flurry rushes.

then the final fight in the sky was somehow even more of a bore than using the light bow in the BotW fight. i spend 90% of the fight just gliding. and without tulin.

i say this in that i still loved the game and it was a great experience, but i was a bit disappointed because a lot of aspects about the game just seemed not as well intentioned and put together as it did in BotW and it seems like a lot of a player's experience can be determined purely by luck in how they stumble across things. though i will say shrines were a lot less painful to do because you could be more creative with your solutions compared to BotW.

i'm curious as to what other people thought who did their playthrough without looking for online sources and metagaming.

there was a post recently that talked about getcracked.io and why it's a scam. i think that they were completely correct but i want to give my take on it as to why you shouldn't pay for it (especially not at those prices).

for context, i actually used to enjoy watching some of Coding Jesus's content, especially the call-ins. for the most part, i don't think the call-ins as a concept are too bad because many CS majors do need a reality check that school by itself and doing well in school isn't the same as having working knowledge about concepts.

additionally, fundamentals like networking, OS, and modern language familiarity is not nearly as popular to tell people to focus on compared to LeetCode (this in itself can be up for debate). i think in this, Coding Jesus's content is a breath of fresh air for a lot CS majors to realize there is more to this major than LeetCode and DSA.

i'll talk about getcracked.io first before talking about Coding Jesus's content and it's switch. for context, i've used the platform in the past (about half a year ago). i guess it's not completely paywalled, but at the time i used to use it you could get at least half the platform for free.

for the Coding Jesus fans that say i'm just spiteful and "not cracked", i had an above average submission rate percentage at the time and even reported a vulnerability to Coding Jesus that involved being able to get access to all premium features and answers (for coding and mcq). so safe to say i'm at least fair in my opinion.

for what it's worth the content is actually decently good. the questions ask interesting quirks of the language or concepts. many people will say it's trivia, but i think that their viewpoint is wrong and misunderstand what Coding Jesus's point is for these types of questions. it's not that you're expected to memorize all these trivia questions and know the answers, but it's that if you did have an intimate understanding of the concept, you would already know the answer.

an example that i would give is if you got a question about the implications of moving an object with a const member. that seems a bit like trivia if you're an average CS major, but if you've used C++ enough you would know the answer. likely you didn't sit there and go "let me learn about const objects and its implications for members", but you learned about const and learned about its behavior through use. in that case, you would get the question correct without needing to have "memorized" it.

i will say that a lot of the questions, while good quality, are not unique to the platform and actually are largely sourced from the community. when i last used the platform users could get like $1 in Monero for successful contributions of questions so it wasn't robbery, but there are definitely questions that come from sources like learncpp.com or even the textbooks that Coding Jesus will reference. i would say for many people who dislike the monetization model, this is a strong reason to have distaste as monetizing the work that was built off of free resources (even if declared free use) can be seen as quite off putting.

additionally, the price has dramatically increased for premium features exceeding what i would say is an excessive amount for any access instead of the free access then monetizing further access that most people would expect, and what the platform used to be.

i think that if you combine this with the trend of Coding Jesus's content to more just be advertising the getcracked.io product, you could probably understand the growing distaste for it. the way he advertises the product used to be about how it's a refreshing product and a unique resource that is free to approach and users can show their support if they wish. he also sells this idea that anyone can break into quant and that his platform getcracked.io is exactly the tool to do that.

the irony is that it is an interview prep site primarily. interview prep only helps once you've gotten the interviews. and for a large portion of his viewers that go to not T10 schools or go to foreign not high ranking universities, the chances they are getting passed a resume screening for these tier 1 quant firms is incredibly unlikely. getcracked.io in this case can come off as a scam because it's selling this idea that they can fix it by joining the exclusive club that it's trying to sell, an exclusive club of "success" within quant.

there's also the part where he sells the success stories, except i think these should be taken with massive grains of salt because things like survivorship bias occur. "we place dozens of members into tier 1 quant firms" doesn't speak anything to:

a) how many don't get placed into tier 1 quant firms or any quant firms? b) what was the background of those members who did get placed? can you show that the getcracked.io community specifically is what enabled the difference?

it's like universities accepting promising candidates and then when those candidates are successful in the future, they claim the success. while yes, the university helped cultivate them, if you grab kids with only 1500+ SAT Scores and 3.9+ GPAs, what really are the chances that they will have the same results as people not in that profile. obviously it's not the same thing, but i hope you get the point i'm trying to make.

when it concerns Coding Jesus's content i think it's great if you take it with a grain of salt because it definitely can open your eyes if you're a CS major to the concepts that you don't know. there's many call ins where he actually talks about why he asks certain questions and the reasoning behind it is great to hear and understand. but you have to remind yourself he is selling a product.

from what i could find or see, he did work in quant but he didn't work at the Tier 1s many aim for. would you listen to a college advisor who says they can get you into an Ivy if they themselves didn't get into an Ivy? would you take the advice of a software engineer on how to get into FAANG if they never broke into FAANG?

that's not to discredit his experience, as prestige is not everything nor is it much at all, but it's still something to think about.

i think that getcracked.io is an interview prep site, not an educational site. you should use it as a resource when you're already landing interviews and need to prepare. especially since a lot of the educational portion of getcracked.io just tells you to go to a certain section of a book that is free.

i think everyone who is considering paying for the website, you should read the books yourself. read the books, do your own projects. keep up on your university studies. getcracked.io is great if you don't have a structure to learn subjects, except y'all are CS majors. you can just take a course on it and they will give you a syllabus about how to approach the subject.

you can learn everything on getcracked.io by doing projects and truly investing in the subjects you're covering in your coursework. but getcracked.io will not cover everything you can learn from doing projects and truly investing in the subjects you're covering in your coursework.

edit: clarified first statement

i recently graduated from undergrad and as one of my last courses i decided to take a Math Proofs course and I fell in love with it. it led me to look into proving the behavior of programs and formal verification of programs. specifically i have an interest in formal verification of programs at a lower/system level like C programs and eventually make my way towards cryptography.

i recently started working through Software Foundations and am hoping over the next year to work through the various volumes. i wanted to know if there are resources online that are really good for learning this material or resources closely related to the subject.

i recently graduated from undergrad and as one of my last courses i decided to take a Math Proofs course and I fell in love with it. it led me to look into proving the behavior of programs and formal verification of programs. specifically i have an interest in formal verification of programs at a lower/system level like C programs and eventually make my way towards cryptography.

i recently started working through Software Foundations and am hoping over the next year to work through the various volumes. i wanted to know if there are resources online that are really good for learning this material or resources closely related to the subject.

i recently graduated from undergrad and as one of my last courses i decided to take a Math Proofs course and I fell in love with it. it led me to look into proving the behavior of programs and formal verification of programs. specifically i have an interest in formal verification of programs at a lower/system level like C programs and eventually make my way towards cryptography.

i recently started working through Software Foundations and am hoping over the next year to work through the various volumes. i wanted to know if there are resources online that are really good for learning this material or resources closely related to the subject.

Recently I accepted a position as a P1 (software) at Raytheon in MA, but was curious if it was common for people to transfer into RTX BBN. They seem to do some really cool stuff so I wanted to know if that was common after being in the role 1-2 years.

I just got my undergrad in Computer Science from a no-name state school. I can say that aside from a couple classes, the CS instruction was extremely poor across all metrics. Most courses barely made it past the first few chapters, and the depth wasn't there. The department wasn't coordinated so professors didn't actually have a baseline to assume students were at so a lot of courses that required programming basically repeated programming fundamentals. For reference, I had a senior capstone course where the first 4 weeks were python basics (for loops, lists, functions). I took nearly every course they offered and even decided to take additional Math courses, but I've found it to be clear that I have some significant gaps in my math and CS foundations.

I'd like to know if any others had been in a similar position that I am at. For context, I do self-study and it's by self-studying that I've realized I've had so many gaps that my coursework has resulted in. Though as I try my luck with these more advanced topics (relatively advanced) the holes seem to stick out. I plan to spend a couple years in industry, and then plan to pursue a Master's and then maybe a PhD. My goal in that time is to fill my gaps in my maturity in mathematics and computer science.

I would like to know from people who have been in a similar position:

• If you came from a weakn program and got into a solid grad program, how did you prepare, and how big was the adjustment?
• If you ended up working alongside people from strong programs (MIT, CMU, etc.), how did you navigate that dynamic?
• Are there particularly resources, textbooks, or areas you wish you'd looked into first?