4 ms·

When people say/quote things like “can’t even write a correct binary search”, I’m always reminded of this old java bug https://research.googleblog.com/2006/06/

When people say/quote things like “can’t even write a correct binary search”, I’m always reminded of this old java bug https://research.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-nearly.html https://research.googleblog.com/2006/06/extra-extra-read-all... Apparently it is not that easy :) Anyway my personal takeaway from that, is that it is really easy to assume that things you know are easy. And you should be careful about doing so when interviewing.

mseebach 9y ago
GP probably used "correct" incorrectly. From my experience interviewing, they probably meant "works for any non-trivial input at all". Perhaps we need new vocabulary, it seems there exists people who can effectively program computers, but for whom binary search and fizz buzz are to be considered too difficult to understand and get reasonably right. Plenty of HN comments seem to insist on it, whenever the topic of interviewing comes up. Yet, I am absolutely certain that evere single person I've ever worked with in programming would be able to "correctly" implement both binary search and fizz buzz, despite many of them not having been interviewed for them specifically. Indeed, the insistence on those questions comes from an overwhelming consensus in the companies that ask them that the ability to answer them is a reasonable lower bound for the skill these companies understand programming to comprise of. So, perhaps this group of para-fizzbuzz programmers should be called something else, to avoid embarrassing and time-wasting confusion? (Or we should call fizzbuzz-able-programmers something else? I don't want to appropriate the term, I don't have strong feelings about it.). What are typical tasks that such programmers typically undertake, what sort of companies do they work for? Note: in the above, for binary search and fizz buzz, I don't mean those literal problems, I mean general problems of similar complexity, ie. that can be fully stated in a few sentences of simple language, and have straight forward implementations in 5-10 lines, using only simple, built-in programming language features and data types, available in any mainstream programming language - if, loop, arithmetic, array, integer.

mseebach 9y ago

GP probably used "correct" incorrectly. From my experience interviewing, they probably meant "works for any non-trivial input at all". Perhaps we need new vocabulary, it seems there exists people who can effectively program computers, but for whom binary search and fizz buzz are to be considered too difficult to understand and get reasonably right. Plenty of HN comments seem to insist on it, whenever the topic of interviewing comes up. Yet, I am absolutely certain that evere single person I've ever worked with in programming would be able to "correctly" implement both binary search and fizz buzz, despite many of them not having been interviewed for them specifically. Indeed, the insistence on those questions comes from an overwhelming consensus in the companies that ask them that the ability to answer them is a reasonable lower bound for the skill these companies understand programming to comprise of. So, perhaps this group of para-fizzbuzz programmers should be called something else, to avoid embarrassing and time-wasting confusion? (Or we should call fizzbuzz-able-programmers something else? I don't want to appropriate the term, I don't have strong feelings about it.). What are typical tasks that such programmers typically undertake, what sort of companies do they work for? Note: in the above, for binary search and fizz buzz, I don't mean those literal problems, I mean general problems of similar complexity, ie. that can be fully stated in a few sentences of simple language, and have straight forward implementations in 5-10 lines, using only simple, built-in programming language features and data types, available in any mainstream programming language - if, loop, arithmetic, array, integer.