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novalis comments on An attempt at a short no-prerequisite test for programming inclination - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: ShardPhoenix 29 June 2013 11:36PM

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Comment author: novalis 30 June 2013 05:27:43PM *  1 point [-]

The indirection syntax should be rewritten to be left to right.

I don't actually think so. The final answer is simply f(g(h(x))), which is a perfectly normal thing to see in programming.

That said, I still think it's a bad test. It involves no reasoning whatsoever -- merely following instructions carefully. I'm a reasonably good programmer, but sometimes a bit sloppy (that's why I write tests). So, I ended up with the correct final answer but a wrong number in one of the boxes.