Re^3: Sum group of numbers and display each number is on its own line -- plain way

I agree with "the most essential quality of a programmer is to be able to understand a problem" ...

I'm not sure I agree with "with no ready-made crutches" ...

First, they are tools, not crutches. Second, why would you not use the tools if they exist? What is important, as with electric power saws, is learning the use of the tool, and that includes understanding what it does. I do agree with you that often that can not be grasped without working though an implementation manually. But part of learning the craft is learning the tools.

OTOH: This week I had several interviews for a $job, many with observed coding tests. The one I had most trouble with was some numeric array index-related problem, and I found I couldn't refocus my mind from hours of talk about system architecture to slice and splice and (0..$#x), with the two guys chattering amongst themselves, and it being the end of a long day. Just froze and became irritated. "Would you like me to write an object class, or maybe a log adapter, or something *meaningful*?" I asked, darkly.

They changed the subject and we talked about concurrency and parallelization, and of course 5 minutes after the call ended I emailed them a simple solution to their task, which was not dissimilar to many questions here. I don't think they will hold it against me too much, but I guess I must concur that keeping in the habit of using the basics is a good policy!

The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

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Re^4: Sum group of numbers and display each number is on its own line -- plain way by Laurent_R (Canon) on Nov 12, 2017 at 09:30 UTC
Second, why would you not use the tools if they exist? Of course, 1nickt++, I fully agree with you on that. I was saying these things in the context of someone who is obviously a beginner not only in Perl but most probably also in programming, someone who states not to be able to figure out how to sum up five numbers of an array. I think that this person should really learn to use loops and, in that case, nested loops, as shown by Discipulus. So, yes, we should definitely be using tools when they exist and make our lives easier. But, IMHO, a beginner should really learn and understand the basic techniques of programming before using tools that automatize standard, almost boiler-plate, code. That's all I was saying. As an example, there is probably no reason to code a sorting algorithm in Perl for a real-life problem, since we have the `sort` built-in, and this is a very useful and efficient tool that we should use when we need to sort a list or an array. But it is probably very useful, for pedagogical purposes, for a beginner to understand and be able to implement manually a couple of the most common sort algorithms. But I suspect we probably mostly agree on this.	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^4: Sum group of numbers and display each number is on its own line -- plain way
by Laurent_R (Canon) on Nov 12, 2017 at 09:30 UTC

Second, why would you not use the tools if they exist?

1nickt

I was saying these things in the context of someone who is obviously a beginner not only in Perl but most probably also in programming, someone who states not to be able to figure out how to sum up five numbers of an array. I think that this person should really learn to use loops and, in that case, nested loops, as shown by Discipulus.

So, yes, we should definitely be using tools when they exist and make our lives easier. But, IMHO, a beginner should really learn and understand the basic techniques of programming before using tools that automatize standard, almost boiler-plate, code. That's all I was saying.

As an example, there is probably no reason to code a sorting algorithm in Perl for a real-life problem, since we have the sort built-in, and this is a very useful and efficient tool that we should use when we need to sort a list or an array. But it is probably very useful, for pedagogical purposes, for a beginner to understand and be able to implement manually a couple of the most common sort algorithms.

But I suspect we probably mostly agree on this.

[reply]
[d/l]