Give me half an hour logged-in at your keyboard.
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Magic smoke - but we mustn’t let it out!
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Perhaps this would help:
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This. I’m not helped by being largely self-taught and math illiterate so I never really picked up a knack for algorithms. I understand how things like BSTs and sort algorithms work but fuck me I would be screwed if I ever needed to implement one. I mean I’d figure it out sooner or later but it wouldn’t be pretty. Luckily these are problems that have long since been solved by people far smarter than me so I don’t need to do it myself unless I have a damn good reason to do so (which I wouldn’t unless I just didn’t know any better). I’d certainly fail that question.
“What is an abstract class and why do you need it” I could answer no problem but I also spend most of my time programming in object oriented languages and have written several SDKs where abstract classes are an important concept. If I spent my time doing low level systems programming I would never give two shits about abstract classes.
Software engineering is a hugely diverse field with many different areas of expertise. You have people that are great at things like kernels, file systems, encryption, network services, user interfaces, security, tools, compilers, or numerous other areas. These all require very different skill sets and mindsets and I don’t see a lot of overlap.
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The programming test I took to get my current job was awkward as hell because it had this sort of thing in it. It felt like it took forever and my confidence was shot when I went home from that interview. When you’re maintaining an existing code base, you rely on doing things consistently, which usually means having a wrapper function that takes care of float-string conversion and a million other little tasks. If you’re given a test outside of that context you can find yourself floundering.
Turns out I scored better on that test than anyone currently working there. 
But if non-programmers had been watching me sweat bullets while working through that thing, they’d probably assume I had no idea what I was doing.
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Coding from scratch without tools, IDE or libraries always feels like this:
Really cool if you have 30 days, otherwise I’m going to grab my pop-up tent from the car, fling it open, peg it down, done.
(“Does it matter what language I write it in?” “No…” “Good! I’ll do it in 8088 assembler.”)
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Did he have a 27b/6?
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I’m a typical white canadian guy, and i was quizzed once too at the border (years ago). I told them my job was as an artist, so the guy handed me a piece of paper and a pencil and told me to draw a lady sitting across the room. I told him i do all of my work on the computer and that stumped him. He let me in, no further questions.
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I’m sure your complexion had nothing whatsoever to do with your expedient release.
Btw, welcome to Boing Boing.
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abu ghraib comes to mind, unfortunately.
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Considering most border agents have no more than a 6th grade education (the really smart ones have a GED), I’m sure they’d have EVERY idea what the answers meant. Honestly, he should have (if he knew) told them something that “sounded techie” (something a person who had no clue about programming said to me once) and see if they had any idea what it meant.
How would they actually CHECK his answers? Just because they could find the questions to ask him, how would they know if they were correct?
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Isn’t this the same as the idiot bully in high school who had no clue how to do anything but be a bully now gets to torment the people he works for because well, gun.
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Ask some random white guy whose claims to be a software engineer would be believed on face value.
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Well if I had to balance a binary search tree, I would probably be stranded on a desert island with no communication with the outside world and so I’d need an improvised computer. First, after the 3 hour tour was complete, I would convince the Professor to build a computer out of coconuts. Then, I would use the Howell’s extensive supply of luxury bootstraps to get the computer to boot up so I could create a simple CPU/RAM monitor and rudimentary assembler (an operating system wouldn’t be necessary). Then, once I had used the assembler to create a representation of an unbalanced binary palm tree, all I would have left to do would be to balance it. While I was looking the other way and explaining that to Mary Ann and Ginger, Gilligan would be trying to help balance it by putting rocks on the computer, and would accidentally smash the computer in the process. Then we would all shrug, roll credits, and wait for next week to try some other way to get off the island.
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I feel like you’ve just outlined the 2020 Republican platform
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