[vijucat]

I was somehow reminded of this guy who once wowed me in an interview by coding up a small graphics demo rather quickly. Turns out later that that was the exact one program he could code without being hand-held EVERY SINGLE MOMENT. I laugh whenever I remember that incident (from early on in my career, in my defense).

You have to build a repertoire of questions that defeat rote memorization, prove real experience, and show genuine ability to solve unseen problems...

[sshine]

I remember TA'ing African exchange students in Haskell.

They could remember the exact type signature of standard library functions.

They could define a Monad instance from memory at the speed they could type.

But you couldn't ask them a single question outside of what was presented at lectures.

They couldn't solve a single assignment. They were stuck on rote learning.

I'd blame their educational system, because it was quite consistent (sample size = 3).

The classical example: Teacher says X, the whole class repeats in choir X.

[isoprophlex]

There's an interesting bit in "surely you're joking, mr Feynmann" where he is amazed how primary school kids are learning physics. Only, as it turns out, nearly noone in the entire country has any actual understanding of physics, because from elementary school upwards all they do is memorize the material.

https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

[fireflash38]

I've had a lot of success asking about fuckups, worst thing they've had to debug, and general "fuzzy" questions that specifically do not have a single answer, or the answer is so relatable/specific to a person's experience. Then you have to watch them as they answer.