Wait a minute, I always thought the two hard things were cache invalidation, naming things
and off by one errors.
He noted the off-by-one errors as a concern.
I was thinking: this is untested, unreviewed, 2-minute code that shows I can at least do some sort of problem solving. I'm nervous, don't know you, kinda worried about the tone of this interview and you're worried about off-by-one errors.
Kinda glad I didn't get that one. Wish I'd just hung up on the guy.
The problem with getting praised a lot for being smart is that you then feel obliged to say smart-sounding things often, and being critical is an easy way to sound smart. It's even worse if you're hired to be smart. So the guy, if he wasn't a total tool, was probably thinking: I wish I could just be coding, but instead I'm supposed to interview a bunch of people in a way that guarantees it will be awkward. And shit, I just got nervous and said something that sounds insulting. I wish I could just hang up.