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Comment by proc0 | Hacker News Reader

I would attribute some of it to translating the word problem into a logic problem, which I think Fizzbuzz is really testing. Once you see it's just one conditional testing multiples of 3 and 5, and understand it covers the whole problem, it becomes trivial.

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If you can’t translate word problems into code, in what sense are you a programmer though?

What problems don’t boil down to that?

I unfortunately see a lot of developers who struggle with solving problems and want you to solve it so they can simply fill in the blanks. Kind of a code-typist.

The other developer of this type that I've seen can only connect cloud services together.

I'm just saying the tricky part is not writing the code, as it is assumed at the surface level. I have done interviews and have accepted explanatory answers for coding problems because it is obvious sometimes that they know the underlying logic that can be translated into whatever language/framework.

Here they are talking about putting a significant time limit on solving the problem. I'd classify myself as being a reasonable programmer (and I get paid for it), but I generally don't dive from reading a specification into complete code within 15 minutes regardless of how simple the problem is. You spend time thinking about edge cases that you will have to make accommodation for, areas where the requirements are not well defined and need clarification and also talking to the person who wrote the requirements to check your understanding. specifications are rarely perfect, if they were, they would be code that could run.

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