[stahorn]

Sounds a little bit like the stories from Feynman, e.g.: https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...

The students had memorized everything, but understood nothing. Add in access to generative AI, and you have the situation that you had with your interview.

It's a good reminder that what we really do, as programmers or software engineers or what you wanna call it, is understanding how computers and computations work.

[godelski]

There's a quote I love from Feynman

  > The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

I have no doubt he'd be repeating it loudly now, given we live in a time where we developed machines that are optimized to fool ourselves.

It's probably also worth reading Feynman's Cargo Cult Science: https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html