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 mannykannot on Friday February 24, 2017 @02:38PM (#13726965)

I am not an enthusiast of this approach to recruiting, but to be fair, the purpose of the question is not to find someone to flatten lists.

It is reasonable to ask, if a programmer cannot flatten a list, in what sense is that person a programmer? Putting aside the question of whether this is a good approach to recruiting, if this question is being failed with any regularity, it raises some interesting and important questions about the innate difficulty of programming and/or the methods by which it is taught.

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Re:Why it’s hard for programmers to write a program to flatt... by brudgers on Friday February 24, 2017 @04:59PM (#13728326)

If the person flattens a list with the:

   Google
   Copy
   Paste

Algorithm, are they a programmer? Are they more or less of a programmer if instead they use racket or clojure's built-in =flatten=?

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Re:Why it’s hard for programmers to write a program to flatt... by mannykannot on Friday February 24, 2017 @05:40PM (#13728608)

It is the cases of failure that are interesting and informative, and if the methods you mention are the only ways a person can solve the problem, that counts as a failure - as I mentioned, this is not actually about flattening lists.

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