I think that’s a good question. I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of people, and if someone answered the question this way, I think I would enjoy the ‘hard way’

I think that’s a good question. I’ve interviewed and hired a lot of people, and if someone answered the question this way, I think I would enjoy the ‘hard way’ answer. It would depend on the style and framing of the answer as much as the substance. It’s easy to enjoy as a ‘let’s explore the bounds of this problem’ or a ‘let’s do this in an unnecessarily difficult generalization, just for fun/curiosity’. It would be useful in an interview if the candidate recognizes and states that this might be a bad engineering decision, even if it’s good math. When I’m hiring, I want to find people that can generalize and explore a problem, see the larger picture in an interesting way. This article does that. And, just as important is finding people who know when not to do that in practice, who can recognize when and why it’s important to call something good enough, and move on to other problems.