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mike_mg | 12 years ago

it is sort of confusing... do you really consider it a hard problem? I am first year maths student at Uni Warsaw and we literally had this problem in the first month, and solution was found by most people in just a few minutes. It sometimes amazes me how people here at HN find some hard for me problems easy and vice versa

discuss

camus2|12 years ago

Frankly i've been programming for a few years i would not be able to solve the problem in 20 mins. Maybe in 3/4 hours but 20 mins no way. I could come with an idea to solve it though.

But that's a very good exercice.

> I am first year maths student at Uni Warsaw

then Math is your major discipline. Please write down how you would express the solution in a pure mathematical form.

mike_mg|12 years ago

Yeah that's a cool exercise and I try to do a lot of these!

I guess expressing it mathematically purely is already done in the code of the original solution, because in a way program == proof. If you have some time, here's a great read on this: http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22...

davidp|12 years ago

You might be surprised at how many people show up to a developer interview and are unable to have an intelligent conversation about the problem, let alone solve it. This is a weedout question, that's all.

Bear in mind that the objective isn't to weed out people who can't solve it. There are plenty of people who are fine coders who wouldn't quickly hit the solution for any number of reasons, including nervousness. The objective is to weed out the charlatans and amateurs who managed to get past the HR resume filter, so that as little time as possible is wasted.

JoeAltmaier|12 years ago

Its one step above fizz-buzz. And it requires algorithmic thinking. So not hard, just a gateway problem.

mnbvcxza|12 years ago

Could you code a solution for the Boggle problem in 45 minutes?

mike_mg|12 years ago

Given function that checks if given string is a word accepted by the game or a sorted good words list, I think I would be able to. It's a very similar algorithm to queens problem. I'll try doing this and tell you!