Brainbench perl test?

Abigail abigail at abigail.be
Thu Sep 6 19:34:29 BST 2012


On Thu, Sep 06, 2012 at 03:55:36PM +0100, Peter Corlett wrote:
> On 5 Sep 2012, at 17:35, Abigail wrote:
> [...]
> > No. Well, it filters out the wannabees. It doesn't recognize the serious
> > coder. If, given the Fibonacci sequence, or a similar recursive formula,
> > and your first instinct is to solve it with recursion or iteration, you
> > aren't serious.
> 
> Isn't the *point* of this to be a simple test to quickly filter out the no-hopers? I'd hope it wasn't the *only* test.


Well, I responded to uri who claimed it was the distinguish between wannabees
and serious coders. But in my book, being able to calculate the Nth Fibonnaci
number doesn't make you a serious coder. It just means you've past one hurdle,
and I will have some followup questions. You haven't failed the interview,
but you haven't shown that you're a serious coder yet.

But if I gave you a recursive formula (Fibonnaci or something similar), and
you show that you know how to calculate a generating functions, you do 
score bonus points. Extra points if you can even do the calculations in a
few minutes. Heck, I'd even give some points if you know what generating
functions are.



Abigail


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