[jroseattle]

I'd think that refusing a candidate who can't work out how to traverse a tree in 5 minutes for an interview isn't a strong candidate for any coding position.

I've found this sort of generic statement ignores the practical aspects of a hiring decision. Maybe we need to qualify the definition of 'coding position', but I'm thinking of my entire devops team. I'm pretty sure I'd get some sideways looks if I asked many of them how they would implement tree traversal. And my devops team kicks ass. I don't know that a filter on tree traversal helps me in hiring more people for that team.

In keeping with the article, what we really care about is whether someone can be productive and learning how they are productive. It's not uncommon to find a disconnect between computer-science competence and acceptable developer output. I've watched candidates execute whiteboard graph traversal & shortest-path exercises quite well, but their actual code output is just silly. We're still working on finding the right way to detect that ideal mix of "smart and gets things done".

[okaram]

Would they be able to operate on folders and subfolders recursively ? That's tree traversal, and important for devops ... maybe you're talking about doing it in context vs out of context ? or your devops are mostly sysadmins ?

[jroseattle]

Certainly, and yes that is tree traversal, but we don't refer to it in that manner. We refer to this in the context of recursion and iteration. Our interview process for devops is focused much more on practical application.

Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe I suppose.

[RyanZAG]

I think you've hit on the exact issue here: it's not that anybody disagrees that their coders they are hiring need to be able to do tree traversal. The issue is simply that we have given a complicated name for something very simple that every coder already understands. It's simply a communication issue.