A lot of engineering is ensuring you're making an even number of sign errors.
In the moment I felt quite clever, but the interviewer apparently did not appreciate that technique.
we call this "ML" now, and it pays extra
Oh. This is good. I'm using this!
(Obviously there are nuances, but there is not enough space in this comment to elaborate)
Yes, an otherwise good company might have a bad interviewer, but if they don't have some feedback loop to catch it, chances are there are other things they also don't catch.
So I flunked his “test” and then immediately contacted the recruiter and said “no thanks” before he could muahahaha
So, an interviewer might appreciate that balancing of signs if told that it is the fastest way make it work (and pass your demo,) only to fix it later. Once proven that the hacked code gives the right solution maybe you could have offered to send them the correct code on the next day or keep working on it if they wished so.
Not wanting to give up points on an easy test, we gauged the distance the bot had to cover in the test, and quickly uploaded some new software. At the start of the test, our bot moved forward for 4 seconds, stopped, then turned around. Full points on that one!
Some times things just need to work and we can worry about them working _correctly_ later...
In other words, you pulled a Dieselgate, in LEGO form.
Were I to judge your implementation, not only would you sacrifice those points, I'd have disqualified you from the competition on ethical grounds.
There is never an excuse for smoke and mirrors. Never.
I'll come in again.
2. Exactly-once delivery
1. Guaranteed order of messages
2. Exactly-once delivery>“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, and surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again.”
That's perfectly valid, when one knows a specific step or result must be positive or negative.
Not that much different from dimensional analysis, which speedruns you to get/fix to proper formula (at the cost of skimming on dimensionless constants).
Similarly, interviewer was not impressed when they cut me short and started walking me through some step and I pointed to them that their result was obviously wrong as it was dimensionally inconsistent and if they didn't cut me out the formula must have been something like baz*foo/bar^2 or something and now we just have to figure out the constants.
1: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/419313776463077377
(But thanks for sharing what us without a Twitter account cannot see otherwise anymore…)
(because students would often make the mistake while holding their pencil during the exam of how to calculate the curl)
i = i - 2 // because I'm bad at this