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I've been programming professionally for 15 years. I read the "Cheryl's Birthday" problem and instantly said "Dear God, I want nothing to do with this". I don'

by nsxwolf 10y ago

I've been programming professionally for 15 years. I read the "Cheryl's Birthday" problem and instantly said "Dear God, I want nothing to do with this". I don't think I could get the motivation to attempt to solve that unless my boss told me to do it and there was a threat of being canned.

pklausler 10y ago
Hm. I've been programming professionally for 36 years, just looked up the "Cheryl's Birthday" problem, and really enjoyed figuring out the solution. I wouldn't ask this sort of thing as an interview question, though, because of the odds of a "false negative".
- doktrin 10y ago
  I too program professionally (shock of shocks), and I also enjoyed solving the problem. However, I'm torn on how informative this question would be in an interview setting. On the one hand, I kind of abhor gimmicky interview questions. On the other, it could provide some valuable insight into the candidate's thought process & reasoning. Also, I honestly feel like any competent engineer should be able to narrow the solution down to 3 possible dates with some thought and effort - even while in the interview hotseat. It would be unfair to deny someone a position solely on the basis of a logic / word puzzle, but if someone really is incapable (with some light guidance) of tackling at least part of 'cheryl's birthday' then I would want to dig a little deeper to figure out what's going on.
- paulrpotts 10y ago
  I would not ask it as an interview question either, and in fact I dislike interview puzzles unless they are directly related to the task at hand. I did ask this student to look at it, though. Without knowing anything about her I thought it might give me at least a little insight into whether I thought she was suited to a CS program, or not. Basically, I was hoping that _she_ would use her own reaction to the puzzle to make that judgment about herself. I know CS isn't really directly related to this kind of toy puzzle, but like I mentioned, because solving it requires systematic thinking along the lines of making a mathematical proof.
ww520 10y ago
I just looked up Cheryl's Birthday. The wording is designed to obfuscate and confuse. The sentence, "Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard separately the month and the day of her birthday respectively" is so dense and confusing. It would be much clearer to simply state, "Cheryl tells Albert the month and tells Bernard the day of her birthday separately." I have no problem with puzzle. I have problem with puzzles the use word to confuse and obfuscate. Fuck you, I'm here to solve a puzzle, not playing word game. Cheryl's Birthday is just a case of using known facts to eliminate impossibility, like the single day 6/18, progressively.
- paulrpotts 10y ago
  >The wording is designed to obfuscate and confuse. Yep. have you ever worked with a software development process that used formal specification documents? : )
  - ww520 10y ago
    Yes, it's always obfuscated and confusing. That's usually because the users don't even know what they want or what the actual problem is. It takes time to prompt them to formulate what the actual problem is and what the correct expected outcome is. It's not like they know what the problem is and deliberately hiding it. And I got days or weeks to extract the correct information from people. Didn't have to do it under 15 minutes, as in an interview. Interview is a time limited process to discover what the candidate's ability and knowledge are. You want to remove any fluff that is a waste of time. Ask any garbage question and you'll get garbage answer.

by nsxwolf 10y ago

pklausler 10y ago

Hm. I've been programming professionally for 36 years, just looked up the "Cheryl's Birthday" problem, and really enjoyed figuring out the solution. I wouldn't ask this sort of thing as an interview question, though, because of the odds of a "false negative".

doktrin 10y ago
I too program professionally (shock of shocks), and I also enjoyed solving the problem. However, I'm torn on how informative this question would be in an interview setting. On the one hand, I kind of abhor gimmicky interview questions. On the other, it could provide some valuable insight into the candidate's thought process & reasoning. Also, I honestly feel like any competent engineer should be able to narrow the solution down to 3 possible dates with some thought and effort - even while in the interview hotseat. It would be unfair to deny someone a position solely on the basis of a logic / word puzzle, but if someone really is incapable (with some light guidance) of tackling at least part of 'cheryl's birthday' then I would want to dig a little deeper to figure out what's going on.
paulrpotts 10y ago
I would not ask it as an interview question either, and in fact I dislike interview puzzles unless they are directly related to the task at hand. I did ask this student to look at it, though. Without knowing anything about her I thought it might give me at least a little insight into whether I thought she was suited to a CS program, or not. Basically, I was hoping that _she_ would use her own reaction to the puzzle to make that judgment about herself. I know CS isn't really directly related to this kind of toy puzzle, but like I mentioned, because solving it requires systematic thinking along the lines of making a mathematical proof.

ww520 10y ago

I just looked up Cheryl's Birthday. The wording is designed to obfuscate and confuse. The sentence, "Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard separately the month and the day of her birthday respectively" is so dense and confusing. It would be much clearer to simply state, "Cheryl tells Albert the month and tells Bernard the day of her birthday separately." I have no problem with puzzle. I have problem with puzzles the use word to confuse and obfuscate. Fuck you, I'm here to solve a puzzle, not playing word game. Cheryl's Birthday is just a case of using known facts to eliminate impossibility, like the single day 6/18, progressively.

paulrpotts 10y ago
>The wording is designed to obfuscate and confuse. Yep. have you ever worked with a software development process that used formal specification documents? : )
- ww520 10y ago
  Yes, it's always obfuscated and confusing. That's usually because the users don't even know what they want or what the actual problem is. It takes time to prompt them to formulate what the actual problem is and what the correct expected outcome is. It's not like they know what the problem is and deliberately hiding it. And I got days or weeks to extract the correct information from people. Didn't have to do it under 15 minutes, as in an interview. Interview is a time limited process to discover what the candidate's ability and knowledge are. You want to remove any fluff that is a waste of time. Ask any garbage question and you'll get garbage answer.