There's a research paper from the University of Liverpool, published in 2006 where researchers asked people to draw bicycles from memory and how people overestimate their understanding of basic things. It was a very fun and short read.

It's called "The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work" by Rebecca Lawson.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/bf03195929.pdf

A place I worked at used it as part of an interview question (it wasn't some pass/fail thing to get it 100% correct, and was partly a jumping off point to a different question). This was in a city where nearly everyone uses bicycles as everyday transportation. It was surprising how many supposedly mechanical-focused people who rode a bike everyday, even rode a bike to the interview, would draw a bike that would not work.

This is why at my company in interviews we ask people to draw a CPU diagram. You'd be surprised how many supposedly-senior computer programmers would draw a processor that would not work.

If I was asked that question in an interview to be a programmer I'd walk out. How many abstraction layers either side of your knowledge domain do you need to be an expert in? Further, being a good technologist of any kind is not about having arcane details at the tip of your frontal lobe, and a company worth working for would know that.

I mean gp is clearly a joke but

A fundamental part of the job is being able to break down problems from large to small, reason about them, and talk about how you do it, usually with minimal context or without deep knowledge in all aspects of what we do. We're abstraction artists.

That question wouldn't be fundamentally different than any other architecture question. Start by drawing big, hone in on smaller parts, think about edge cases, use existing knowledge. Like bread and butter stuff.

I much more question your reaction to the joke than using it as a hypothetical interview question. I actually think it's good. And if it filters out people that have that kind of reaction then it's excellent. No one wants to work with the incurious.

If it was framed as "show us how you would break down this problem and think about it" then sure. If it's the gotcha quiz (much more common in my experience) then no.

But if that's what they were going for it should be something on a completely different and more abstract topic like "develop a method for emptying your swimming pool without electricity in under four hours"

It has nothing to do with “incurious”. Being asked to draw the architecture for something that is abstracted away from your actual job is a dickhead move because it’s just a test for “do you have the same interests as me?”

It’s no different than asking for the architecture of the power supply or the architecture of the network switch that serves the building. Brilliant software engineers are going to have gaps on non-software things.

That's reasonable in many cases, but I've had situations like this for senior UI and frontend positions, and they: don't ask UI or frontend questions. And ask their pet low level questions. Some even snort that it's softball to ask UI questions or "they use whatever". It's like, yeah no wonder your UI is shit and now you are hiring to clean it up.

Raises hand.

Poe's Law [1]:

> Without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I wish I had interviewed there. When I first read that people have a hard time with this I immediately sat down without looking at a reference and drew a bicycle. I could ace your interview.

There’s also a great art/design project about exactly this. Gianluca Gimini asked hundreds of people to draw a bicycle from memory, and most of them got the frame, proportions, or mechanics wrong. https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/

I just had an idea for an RLVR startup.

Absolutely. A technically correct bike is very hard to draw in SVG without going overboard in details

Its not. There are thousands of examples on the internet but good SVG sites do have monetary blocks.

https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/bicycle-svg

Several of those have incorrect frames:

https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/cyclist_23714264.htm

https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/bicycle-icon-black-li...

Or missing/broken pedals:

https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/bicycle-silhouette-ic...

https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/bicycle-silhouette-ve...

http://freepik.com/premium-vector/bicycle-silhouette-vector-...

From smaller to larger nitpick, there's basically something wrong with all of the first 15 or so of these drawings. Thanks for agreeing :)

I'm not positive I could draw a technically correct bike with pen and paper (without a reference), let alone with SVG!

Yes, but obviously AGI will solve this by, _checks notes_ more TerraWatts!

The word is terawatts unless you mean earth-based watts. OK then, it's confirmed, data centers in space!

…in space!