[munchbunny]

Like the old exercise where you have to write instructions for making PB&J. I know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but when I have to explain it, clearly, and in minute detail I’m forced to acknowledge the gaps - the steps my brain just skips over and takes as a given. But PB&J is easy so even when I might struggle with articulating the mechanics of it to someone else I don’t doubt my ability. That changes quickly though as complexity increases.

That's fundamentally a trap question. It's like when you keep asking "why?" until the answerer runs out of explanations because we've inevitably reduced things to quantum mechanics. I think the exercise is a useful demonstration of why the code you write doesn't necessarily do what you think you wrote, but as an exercise (or, god forbid, an interview question) I don't think it's that useful.

These days, my answer (after the usual contextual questions if this were a PM/dev interview) would be "I would tape a GoPro to my head and record a video of me making PB&J. If there's any ambiguity, I think 99% of people would be able to fill in the blanks."

[ver_ture]

Some information such as the making of a sandwich, is not conductive to be conveyed through text. So the correct answer for me would be, "I would use a different medium to convey the info, like video."