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Part of being a good developer is teasing the constraints out of the customer. You're never going to be handed a perfect requirement. If you're not given constr

Part of being a good developer is teasing the constraints out of the customer. You're never going to be handed a perfect requirement. If you're not given constraints don't get annoyed, simply ask about them.

jazzychad 14y ago
Precisely. I also say, "This is a very open-ended question in which I am intentionally vague on some points. Ask me about information you want or points you need clarified." Like I said, I have no desire for them to create the "perfect, correct" solution; but I do want to know how they think about a problem and what questions they ask in the face of deficient information. I proactively encourage them to do so, so I am not trying to trick them into failure or anything.
- knowtheory 14y ago
  Then that's fair enough. I have to say, I respond quite differently to "I have a problem I'm trying to solve" vs something like "I need this algorithm implemented", and a lot of the way these programming challenges are presented always come off to me as the latter, and as a result, contrived.
- sanderjd 14y ago
  A problem with entirely made-up domain-less questions like this is that any additional constraints are equally as arbitrary as the question itself, and thus difficult to probe for in the same way that someone would probe a customer for constraints to real problems. It seems like you're very interested in people asking questions like "how big might the array be" or "what order of time can you afford to wait for the answer to this", to which you might answer "a billion" or, "as little as possible", but those questions are very different and less meaningful than questions like "how many users will this system have", and "how much time can users of this system afford to wait for a response", even though the answers may be the same.
bunderbunder 14y ago
As one of my colleagues likes to complain, the hardest thing in the world to find is programmers who try to make sure they're giving you what you want instead of just giving you what you asked for.

jazzychad 14y ago

Precisely. I also say, "This is a very open-ended question in which I am intentionally vague on some points. Ask me about information you want or points you need clarified." Like I said, I have no desire for them to create the "perfect, correct" solution; but I do want to know how they think about a problem and what questions they ask in the face of deficient information. I proactively encourage them to do so, so I am not trying to trick them into failure or anything.

knowtheory 14y ago
Then that's fair enough. I have to say, I respond quite differently to "I have a problem I'm trying to solve" vs something like "I need this algorithm implemented", and a lot of the way these programming challenges are presented always come off to me as the latter, and as a result, contrived.
sanderjd 14y ago
A problem with entirely made-up domain-less questions like this is that any additional constraints are equally as arbitrary as the question itself, and thus difficult to probe for in the same way that someone would probe a customer for constraints to real problems. It seems like you're very interested in people asking questions like "how big might the array be" or "what order of time can you afford to wait for the answer to this", to which you might answer "a billion" or, "as little as possible", but those questions are very different and less meaningful than questions like "how many users will this system have", and "how much time can users of this system afford to wait for a response", even though the answers may be the same.

bunderbunder 14y ago

As one of my colleagues likes to complain, the hardest thing in the world to find is programmers who try to make sure they're giving you what you want instead of just giving you what you asked for.