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A comment on Performance comparison: counting words in Python, Go, C++, C, Awk, Forth, Rust. Parent comment

Re:Performance comparison: counting words in Python, Go, C++... by hamburglar on Monday March 15, 2021 @01:42PM (#26469017)
Being a programmer involves a lot of things that are difficult to test for all at once in 45 minutes. Be irked all you want, but it seems counterproductive to pretend what’s being asked is in anyway unclear or unreasonable when you’re given a pure programming question with a clear spec. You’re supposed to write the code. That’s all.
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Re:Performance comparison: counting words in Python, Go, C++... by Veedrac on Monday March 15, 2021 @01:46PM (#26469068)
My problem isn't that the spec is unclear, it's that the spec is silly. The task makes no sense, and selects for misusing tools. This makes it a bad interview question as given.
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Re:Performance comparison: counting words in Python, Go, C++... by hamburglar on Monday March 15, 2021 @06:30PM (#26470138)
I’d argue that the problem does make perfect sense and isn’t a “misuse of tools” if you manage to understand the goal of the interviewer, which is “watch this person write code for a solution to a well-specified but arbitrary (perhaps even silly) problem.”
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