3 ms·

I also hate puzzles and I never understood why so many programmers find them interesting. I think much of real-world problem solving is about understanding. Un

I also hate puzzles and I never understood why so many programmers find them interesting. I think much of real-world problem solving is about understanding. Understanding the situation. Understanding the history of the problem, what has been tried, what didn't work, etc. Asking a lot of questions and analyzing the answers. That's what I think should be called problem solving and I think there is very little overlap between this and puzzle solving. Puzzle solving is generally about finding the trick that the creator of the puzzle used, or in the case of job interviews, fitting your solution to what the creator imagined. Real-world problems don't work like that.

VLM 10y ago
Agree and extend with the addition of troubleshoot the failed solutions and try to figure out how to verify or prove the solution works. There are rail games where you have to progress exactly as the designer specified in the one true way. Then there are games where its a sandbox, minecraft style. I can't stand the former type of game and immensely enjoy the latter. Bad puzzles remind me of rail games. You're trapped on the worlds most boring path and now its a boring ESP test to see if you can guess the exact one true path the puzzle designer baked into the cake. Once you realize anything can be baked into the cake, how incredibly boring it becomes! Lets say you need to hire a navigator. You know, map reading, dead reckoning, digital tools like GPS, domain specific knowledge, all that stuff. Surely it takes great spatial awareness to be a navigator. I know, at interviews we'll hire navigators based on how well they solve those annoying string and rope puzzles. Now be a good little monkey and untangle the ring from the puzzle and we'll give you a job...