- As people pointed out, it's advanced FizzBuzz (really advanced)
- I can easily see a lot of people being unable to solve it, not because they can't do it, but because of a "performance anxiety". The bar here is quite high, and the result is binary (does it work or not).
- I like that it is quite close to real life (that people have to read code, figure it out, write code). On another hand, again, what is not real, that you are parachuted into a unknown (quite big) codebase and expect to add a small feature in 3 hours.
The result is not binary - you can have it fully working, or forget binary protocol, or syntax accepted but multiplication not happening; or correct code changes done, but code does not build...
That is one of advantages of longer questions (compared to 5 minute one): even if task is not fully done, there are plenty of other signals.
Given that they're specifically hiring for high-performance database work in C++, I think it's a appropriate to have a pretty dang high bar. For less-intense work, I would definitely want to formulate a less intense version of this style of problem.
- As people pointed out, it's advanced FizzBuzz (really advanced) - I can easily see a lot of people being unable to solve it, not because they can't do it, but because of a "performance anxiety". The bar here is quite high, and the result is binary (does it work or not). - I like that it is quite close to real life (that people have to read code, figure it out, write code). On another hand, again, what is not real, that you are parachuted into a unknown (quite big) codebase and expect to add a small feature in 3 hours.