[hititncommitit]

> I'd fail an interview candidate that suggested adding 1 each time for subsequent prime testing

The problem a team that always seeks the optimal solution is that never they get shit done. And that’s rarely optimal in a business context. Your view does not strike me to be nearly as arrogant as it is short-sighted.

I think on a team of one I want the guy who gets it done without thinking. On a team of two I want a guy that’s somewhere in the middle. And on a team of three, that’s when I want my optimiser. Because in the time that guy number 3 has written let’s say 3 files of optimal code, guy number 10 files of not optimal code. And you rarely need guy number 3 to fix all ten, you just need him to fix the one or two files that actually matter.

Clients rarely ask “is this optimal?”. But they always ask “is this done?”.

All three developers have different approaches. All three are assets.

I think on some level then you’re making the same mistake that we could say the “just add one guy” made if your comment is honest- not factoring in (his) speed.

I think code readability, rather than code optimisation is far more important thing to get hung up on in an interview (and is, I must remind some of you, not to be confused with conciseness). And you can see this in the end result. But if you’re following along and the interviewee already knows you know what’s going on because of that, you can see it in smaller ways- it could be as simple as going back and changing a variable name such as open (maybe a function?) to isOpen (almost always a Boolean value).

I think most of us are in this position pretty often where we’re writing and figuring out something at the same time, maybe we just see if it works first and don’t give a name much thought or maybe we change the actual value or type of a variable in the process and the variable name becomes ambiguous. I’d look for small indicators that shoe me that this person is considering readability. But I still don’t necessarily expect it to be as readable as it would be in a more natural setting I mean I think 90% of these sorts of things start off with the person saying “I swear I can type” within the first five minutes of being watched- if they get flustered while being watched that it effects their typing, it certainly also effects their coding as well.