Few Challenge questions do not make sense

Question

I see lots of questions that involves complex for loops, while loops, recursions etc. These questions might sound geeky and you may feel great when you actually solve it. but technically they are not programming questions.

Eg:
int i =0;
for( i = 1; i < 10; i++ ){
// world's most complex problem here
}

the above code will almost be Same for C, C++, Java, C# ,JavaScript and many other languages.

Such questions should come under algorithm and arithmetic. these questions in no way test your Java or C# knowledge.

Anyone who does not even know what C# or Java or C++ can actually answer these questions.

These questions should be moved from Programming language to a separate category.

Answer 1

Seniru Pasan knowing math is essential, yes, but it is not essential to be able to quickly calculate some weird unusual mathematical contraption made out of 2 loops under limited time. This is the bad kind of challenge, since you are given no explaination of what the hell does that piece of code even calculates, while you will have atleast some sort of a comment explaining the code in other competent people's code

but there is a kind of mathematical challenge that i do like: lets say there is a function named "getFactorial" that returns the factorial of the argument, and we are asked to guess its output. You dont need to dig into how this function works to figure out what will be it's output, you just need to know how do factorials work and you can calculate it yourself quickly

Answer 2

lol // world's most complex problem here
I agree, they're too broad and mathematical to be language specific.

Answer 3

i dislike challenges that just require you to do quick math in your head, and test how well you can remember values of each variable under condition with limited time

as you said, this does not test your language skill. The only language knowledge these challenges require is to understand what actions the code does, which is achieveable by knowing loops and operators, which is a basic knowledge, after that it's just testing your math

Answer 4

My favorite has to be where you have to verify if substring matches another string and if not, you have to count how many characters are in original string.
And by favorite I mean I absolutely loathe it.

Answer 5

As a good programmer you should be able to solve those problems. In my opinion they are the best questions to ask.
Note: Knowing math is essential for programmers.

Answer 6

Seniru Pasan a good programmer is some one who keeps up to the trend. a good programmer is a one who realised using for loops or double for loops in java are are for dinosaurs.