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It does irk me too. Being a programmer requires understanding the complexities hidden behind a task, and this brushes them all aside as if they don't matter. T
by Veedrac 6y ago
It does irk me too. Being a programmer requires understanding the complexities hidden behind a task, and this brushes them all aside as if they don't matter.
There are cases where your task is nice, simple, and well-defined, but word counting is not one of them. It's better to give a more realistic task that allows people to think about the premises.
- hamburglar 6y agoBeing a programmer involves a lot of things that are difficult to test for all at once in 45 minutes. Be irked all you want, but it seems counterproductive to pretend what’s being asked is in anyway unclear or unreasonable when you’re given a pure programming question with a clear spec. You’re supposed to write the code. That’s all.
- Veedrac 6y agoMy problem isn't that the spec is unclear, it's that the spec is silly. The task makes no sense, and selects for misusing tools. This makes it a bad interview question as given.
- hamburglar 6y agoI’d argue that the problem does make perfect sense and isn’t a “misuse of tools” if you manage to understand the goal of the interviewer, which is “watch this person write code for a solution to a well-specified but arbitrary (perhaps even silly) problem.”
- EvilEy3 6y agoThis is litmus test to weed out people who pretend to be programmers. You assess complexities hidden behind the task in system design round.
- Veedrac 6y agoI was more viewing this in context of the article, which goes on to micro-optimize a version with an IMO unreasonable set of assumptions. If it's instead explicitly given that this is a quick litmus test, the choices of the first pass implementation don't really matter, and you'll talk about complexities after, then sure.