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>Hugely over-architected solution? Eliminated

For a code interview I can see myself over-engineering a solution even though my day-to-day coding style is all about flexibility and readability. In my mind being able to over-engineer shows an ability to code.

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This is good feedback. We've only gotten one submission that we thought was grossly over-architected, but it's worth revisiting what we tell candidates to lead them in the direction of not trying to show off and to just write the code as they would normally.

> In my mind being able to over-engineer shows an ability to code

Huh, very mixed feelings here. My gut reaction is to reply that "it also shows poor judgement", but there is some truth to what you are saying. The middle ground would be where you can actually explain what you are trying to achieve with the over-engineered bits.

What is over-engineering for a toy example is good coding for some problems.

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