[mquander]

Solving Sudoku isn't exactly rocket science. I can understand if you don't have the cleanest, most elegant solution in the world, but if you can't even make a tiny bit of progress toward writing a Sudoku solver in a few hours, then I don't think you have any business holding a programming job, much less telling other programmers how to do their jobs.

I mean, those Ron Jeffries blog posts read like someone who has never solved a non-trivial programming problem in his life. He literally makes no headway on any difficult part of the problem, and he spends what appears to be the better part of several hours working hard to get nowhere on code that does very little. If someone is listening to him about how to approach programming projects, I've got a bridge to sell that man.

[litewulf]

In fact, solving Sudoku puzzles was a programming assignment given in my first year of undergraduate study. We were given input/output specifications, and told to write in C++. That was it.

Seeing as how most of the class passes, I assume almost any joker can write a half-decent sudoku solver if sufficiently motivated.