I had an onsite recently that told me were were going to be building something that had to interact with a postgres database. I built out the entire backend pr

I had an onsite recently that told me were were going to be building something that had to interact with a postgres database. I built out the entire backend prior and took copious notes because getting stuck looking up things like “how do I initialize a postgresdb” (something I do maybe once a year, if ever) would eat up time. I think I did pretty well at that onsite because of the fact that I prepped before hand and they didn’t seem to mind that. It’s weird to me because in general most engineers are rarely if ever creating an entire stack from scratch and it can be very easy to want to do such a thing methodically and with best practices in mind. How would I enable hot code reloading? How do I set up PostGres so I’m not just connecting as super user which is obviously a security risk? Etc etc. To be able to do these tasks under pressure with an engineers mindset is tough and you either have to really drill down and focus and stress that in a real setting you wouldn’t be connecting as superuser but for the sake of time in this particular toy exercise you will be. Being able to prep was essential, and even so, I still stumbled here and there with unfamiliar syntax. Interviewing is not a solved problem.