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Comment: Re:They forgot what tests are for (Score 1) 743

by Tawnos (#37978120) Attached to: Tough Tests Flunk Good Programming Job Candidates

"Gotcha" questions are not effective at determining problem solving ability. Questions that have more than one means of approach are much more effective. If a question is superficially easy if you know the trick, but impossibly hard without it, then it doesn't offer any benefit to assessing how a person might resolve specification ambiguity, approach the problem's possible pitfalls, and ultimately resolve the issue. Examples of these types of questions include the "detect a loop in a linked list" (tortoise and hare algorithm), "swap two variables without using a third" (XOR or use pointer math), "three light bulbs in a room, three switches outside, you can only enter once" (two on, wait, one off, feel the off bulbs for the warm one).

Comment: Re:"The criticism died down"... oh really? (Score 1) 302

by Tawnos (#37442594) Attached to: Ballmer Hints At 'Metro-ization' of Office

The Size of Things

"Because the Ribbon consolidates the UI into one space, it pushes the document down in the window a bit--giving the illusion of there being less space than there really is."

People are notoriously bad about doing eyeball approximations of size. Our instincts produce results contrary to reality, because we are subjective, not objective observers. It's why you can serve a drink in a tall, skinny glass, and people will assume they are getting more liquid than the same amount served in a short, fat one.

Bizoos, n.: The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a basketball. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

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