[dllthomas]

"without being negatively judged for lack of documentation or a debugger"

A good judge at a whiteboard won't mark you down for uncertainty about interfaces, which partially ameliorates this, for those cases where you have a good judge...

I'm also tempted to say that needing a debugger to lay out a mostly correct solution to a small problem is weird - can you elaborate on how that might be applicable?

In any event, I agree with your ultimate conclusion - holistic is probably a better way to go.