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.

In reply to Re^3: Sum group of numbers and display each number is on its own line -- plain way by 1nickt
in thread Dice roll chances by Anonymous Monk

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