breaking question down to possibly facilitate solution?

[rfbowen]

Is this useful? Something we keep in our back pocket if someone gets stuck?

[rileyshanahan20]

imo, i still think its better to simplify to one question / one function. I think its more confusing with three but happy to tinker and experiment.

[rfbowen]

imo, i still think its better to simplify to one question / one function. I think its more confusing with three but happy to tinker and experiment.

i think we need to make this repo private and send candidates a zip of it, so given that i'm open to you making a branch of the project and trying it with a few candidates

my reservation is mostly that we're seeing candidates struggle even when the problem is decomposed.

i believe putting it into a single question will create something with a high ceiling (excellent candidates can differentiate), but may represent a stress-wall for a lot of candidates across the rest of the spectrum.

e.g., they'll need to either recognize the nice solution that can handle the presence and absence of the filter routine in one tidy loop, or they'll wind up creating two logical branches. seems like inviting new opportunities for things to go poorly, which - if we want to dial difficulty up i think will actually be a good move, but i think we may be needing to go in the other direction?

[msohcw]

IMO I really like having the signature to pull out. I think I would've pulled this out at the 40min mark when I saw candidates spinning. But I also feel like it's useful signal to see a candidate spinning, so I wouldn't add this immediately.