[wellpast]

I can relate to the pain of going through an interview knowing that the interviewer is expecting a specific approach/answer (an OO answer!) that my hard-won experience has already long ruled out. And morals and/or my sense of identity — and/or a fear that the Gods are watching — refuses to allow me to play the interviewer’s game (at my own practical loss).

[agarden]

I don't quite understand. If I were interviewing the OP and asked this chess question, then got his answer presented much like it was on Quora ("Well, the thing to understand about representing a chess board is that if you want to build a usable chess engine, the size of chess board representation is a critical constraint..."), I would be impressed. Hire that guy. He understands that the important thing is to figure out the solution constraints.

On the flip side, if the interviewer learns something from you in an interview and that means he doesn't want to hire you, aren't you glad to have escaped that work environment? Assuming, of course, that the interviewer is representative of the people you would be doing actual work with.

[wellpast]

I agree w/ you. So in that sense it’s not truly at my loss—that part I was being (somewhat) rhetorical about.

However it has definitely been the case where I’ve contended with some Senior Engineer who has found the light in OO programming, inheritance, Template Method, etc, etc and no amount of dialectic will change his mind.

This programmer often doesn’t see the severe impedance that his OO code, his type hierarchies, etc are causing to agile delivery of the new and newer software. How do you show an OO-religionist...the light, so to speak? These quesitions are not easy to get into a lab and give him the hard numbers.

Just an example here: Matrix algebra is easiest done with first-class matrix abstractions. So my compeer puts everything into some other abstraction. And I say, look, look how much easier it is to do our work when our data is modeled differently? And he says “that’s not easier” — okay, you are objectively right, but your peer doesn’t “see it” or refuses to see it, or what, I don’t know— but this is almost de facto industry situation—you can’t prove that your ergonomics are better because your peer doesn’t even speak in proofs anyway.

Now I could go find another job but my equity is actually worth something here (it really is), so I put up with it. But it’s frustrating nevertheless-and having a better abstraction only costs my coworker to learn something. It’s not going to make my equity any less valuable—might make it more valuable, if anything.