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An interesting dive into the cargo cult of tech interviews. Maybe I misunderstand the author's methodology. Here's the chain of reasoning he seems to be advanci

An interesting dive into the cargo cult of tech interviews. Maybe I misunderstand the author's methodology. Here's the chain of reasoning he seems to be advancing: 1. Linked list questions are often about pointer manipulation. 2. C and Pascal make frequent use of pointer manipulation. 3. If Usenet posts that mention C and Pascal mention pointer manipulation more than Prolog, Lisp, and Smalltalk posts mention it, linked list questions must have been designed to test for experience with C and Pascal. The last inference seems either extremely circumstantial or trivially true. Prolog doesn't expose pointers to the user, as far as I know. Smalltalk just seems to have object references. If pointers are only available in C and Pascal, then it stands to reason that only C and Pascal posts will mention pointers. There's nothing about linked lists in this argument. So, sure, a category of interview questions that crucially rely on pointer manipulation does test a candidate's understanding of pointer manipulation. But looking at Usenet posts does not offer any additional support for this explanation. I can also imagine that those questions were posed in C or Pascal, which itself obviously filters for people who have used C or Pascal.

hwayne 6y ago
(3) is backwards: it's a prediction, not a deduction. I had the theory "LL questions were meant to test C/Pascal knowledge", based on studying `net.jobs`. I then came up with a test for the theory: if it was true, then the C and Pascal newsgroups would spend a lot more time talking about pointers and memory manipulation than other language newsgroups. That turned out to be true. If it turned out to be false, then other programmers are likely spending as much time thinking about memory manipulation as C/Pascal programmers, meaning LL questions wouldn't be a good shibboleth. That doesn't mean the theory is true, but the fact it withstood my prediction gives me more confidence in it, the same way I'd be more confident in a scientific. Another prediction would be that C/Pascal manuals spend more time on LL algorithms than manuals for other languages. That one I haven't (yet) checked.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  I understood that you were testing a hypothesis. My point is that the test is only improving our confidence about LL questions marginally or not at all. Specifically, you already have the premises that LL is about pointers, and that some languages are far more "about pointers" than others. Validating the fact that people talk about pointers in posts on languages that support pointers and that they don't talk about pointers in posts on languages that don't support them is a forgone conclusion. Like, I'm buying the argument overall and I think it's a useful dive through history, I'm just not buying the test.

hwayne 6y ago

(3) is backwards: it's a prediction, not a deduction. I had the theory "LL questions were meant to test C/Pascal knowledge", based on studying `net.jobs`. I then came up with a test for the theory: if it was true, then the C and Pascal newsgroups would spend a lot more time talking about pointers and memory manipulation than other language newsgroups. That turned out to be true. If it turned out to be false, then other programmers are likely spending as much time thinking about memory manipulation as C/Pascal programmers, meaning LL questions wouldn't be a good shibboleth. That doesn't mean the theory is true, but the fact it withstood my prediction gives me more confidence in it, the same way I'd be more confident in a scientific. Another prediction would be that C/Pascal manuals spend more time on LL algorithms than manuals for other languages. That one I haven't (yet) checked.

legerdemain 6y ago
I understood that you were testing a hypothesis. My point is that the test is only improving our confidence about LL questions marginally or not at all. Specifically, you already have the premises that LL is about pointers, and that some languages are far more "about pointers" than others. Validating the fact that people talk about pointers in posts on languages that support pointers and that they don't talk about pointers in posts on languages that don't support them is a forgone conclusion. Like, I'm buying the argument overall and I think it's a useful dive through history, I'm just not buying the test.