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Is the general consensus now that core programming skills and being good at math are the same thing? Because after taking a look at this challenge it appears to be a math problem that requires mathematical knowledge and barely any programming knowledge.

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Did you even try it? You can get pretty far by just tinkering. I came up with a O(n) algorithm that gets me 30 rectangles just by playing around. In general, you can get "pretty good" results just by taking low hanging fruit then optimizing.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this. Exercises like these have a very poor accuracy if it is used it to test for developers.

See above. Could be testing for problem solving ability and willingness to try.

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