Re:Do We Worship Complexity?
by uryga on Tuesday October 16, 2018 @05:29PM
(#18233463)
Implementing a stdlib isn't a thing you do every day. Presumably GP was referring to more common situations, where using the stdlib is (usually) preferable to rolling your own solution.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
They were interviewing for Google. It's not uncommon to have to implement a standard library function (or not be able to use one) in many contexts at Google. Besides, the question is just the most basic setup to assess how a candidate would fare in comparable situations.
They were interviewing for Google.
99% of developers at Google are doing commodity work. It is are practically IBM or HP now.
Is it though? Because the answer to "suddenly I need to implement a standard library" is "I google the accepted solutions" and if I don't have Google then I goto the library and check out a bunch of old CS books.
And then the interviewer's follow-up question should be "fine, since you don't want to indulge me and implement a solution to this toy problem, I'll ask you to implement a much more complicated function which doesn't exist in any library!"