[nybblesio]

So much this. I've been programming for 30+ years. My brain only has so much cache space and it dumps frequently. Asking me questions that clearly are testing my ability to hold large amounts of data in my meat computer isn't testing my ability to design and write computer programs.

Sure, I'd love to have a "mind palace" like Sherlock. Alas, I do not. I often admit this as early in the interview process as possible to avoid wasting time.

[bunderbunder]

If anything, it's testing your ability to misdesign computer programs.

I hate working on software that was written to be read by an audience with perfect recall, because, as a human, I just don't have that. Give me code that assumes I have the memory of a goldfish, and can't keep track of anything that isn't right in front of my face.

I'm pretty sure that's what half of Dijkstra's papers were trying to say, weren't they?

[nybblesio]

Agreed and Knuth's Literate Programming. Our industry is caught in the event horizon of the black hole named, "cargo cults".

[bunderbunder]

The black hole that gets me is a love of complicated things. It seems like, given a choice between two different things that are equally capable of solving the problem, 9 out of 10 hairless apes will pick the one that has more switches and knobs.

I haven't tried literate programming, but one of the things that entices me about it is that my instinct says that it's a vaccine against unnecessary complexity. If you can't express it comprehensibly in both English and code, there's likely an easier way to do it.