Why it’s hard for programmers to write a program to flatten a list?

Re:Why it’s hard for programmers to write a program to flatt... by dragonwriter on Friday February 24, 2017 @02:21PM (#13726756)

> The fact that "int or list of int" isn't sanely representable in any concise way in the mainstream OO languages is a sign that perhaps this isn't a great example problem for a Java interview.

OTOH, if you are going to be using Java dealing with real world problems, many of which have aspects that are not neatly representable in Java's type system, some test of how you deal with the mismatch of that type system with a problem statement may be appropriate.

A lot of whether this is appropriate in an interview goes beyond the language used to what the job entails and what you are trying to learn about the candidate from the response.

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Re:Why it’s hard for programmers to write a program to flatt... by alkonaut on Friday February 24, 2017 @02:38PM (#13726969)

Yes obviously Java is going to be the tool at hand, but to keep focus on the good aspects of this exercise (naming, testing, etc) perhaps it would be best to have a problem that has a good solution in Java.

If the subject does this property with generics that simple sum type alone requires writing several classes just to represent the sum type.

It's not clear from the article what the input is. What signature I can use depends on what the input data is. Is it a string rep of the nested list? Can I assume it's any type I want such as my own NestedList?

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