Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without leet coding, named algorithms (binary search, dynamic programming, and other esoterica) or data structures (only requiring knowledge of arrays, assoc arrays, loops is enough), coding interviews still allow you to demonstrate your thinking ability. You can construct various simple problems (that require only loops and arrays) that can easily be mapped to real world problems and see how well the programmers per…
You see but here is the thing... Let's say I am interviewing, for their corresponding roles, one of the Aerospace Engineers responsible for the design of the latest Airbus, or a specialized heart surgeon with 10 years of experience, or a Civil Engineer that lead 5 year projects building bridges crossed daily by thousands of persons. What kind of look would they give me....If I start throwing them the type of mental p…
Programming as a craft, generally, does not have a "great filter" like medicine, civil engineering or aerospace. The longer one survives in these fields, there's a really small chance of surviving out of luck and not out of experience.
If you look at carpentry instead, the mental part of the craft is also one thing you can test. For example, you might provide a limited set of tools (like arrays and loops) and require a solution to a carpentry problem. The mental part is not tested by puzzles (by puzzle I assume there's a set of tricks you need to know, or in the case of programming, a particular algorithm), but by problems. Problems might be more concrete for carpentry.
The problem above with buses can be reframed into whatever the area of programming expertise is for a candidate. There's a simple underlying structure in the problem that can appear in web dev, networking, databases, that maps directly to that bus problem. If you cannot figure out the buses, then how will figuring it out for something else be simpler? The solution is just loops and arrays, there's no fancy algorithms, there's no fancy math, it's pure art of programming.
Like I said, it's only one part that you're testing, which is thinking/problem solving. It can also be affected by personal anxieties or whatever. Failure at a particular problem does not mean much. But I would not say that these kinds of coding tests break hiring.
I mean, I hear people are being asked to pick if they're more hardworking or creative, or to describe where they see themselves in 10 years, or some other similar abstract silly stuff. I'd much rather someone asks me about buses.