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I think some of it comes from our notion of human intelligence being universally applicable to all problems. Puzzles and chess are often used as a proxy for th

I think some of it comes from our notion of human intelligence being universally applicable to all problems. Puzzles and chess are often used as a proxy for that. The thinking goes is that if you're smart then you'll be good at puzzle solving. If you're smart then you'll be a good programmer. It's not really something that has a lot of evidence for. One of the best career advice I've received is to interview with lots of companies but do it in the order of least wanted job first so by the time you're interviewing for the job you really want, you have had lots of practice. It works pretty well. Puzzle solving and programming are both skills that you get good at with practice. Someone else already commented that if you program then you're a programmer. I think that's really the only definition you should use. Everything else are just proxies, mostly bad ones, for if you're a good programmer or not.

titanomachy 12y ago
> ... if you're smart you'll be good at puzzle solving There is some evidence in psychology that many seemingly unrelated types of intelligence are correlated with each other. For example there is correlation between verbal and spatial reasoning ability. Sure, there might be people who can solve differential geometry problems in their head but have terrible language skills, but those people are outliers. Whether this has relevance to hiring programmers is debatable, but preferring intelligent candidates isn't an unusual idea. Law, medical, and dental schools base their selection on what is essentially a verbal reasoning test (LSAT, MCAT, DAT) though it's hard to imagine that verbal reasoning is the most important part of being a dentist. They follow the same thinking.