All children know that parrots can talk. All adults understand that parrots simply repeat sounds.
You'll laugh, but these same adults actually believe that an Algorithm Interview is a conversation between a very smart algorithm expert who is trying to find out whether the candidate understands algorithms at an acceptable level…
So, how many ycombinator.com readers have successfully passed the algorithms interview? Probably tens of thousands.
Well, how many of them were able to understand that breaking down sorting into independent stages is a Fundamental Discovery? Zero!
Zero questions and comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314420
P.S. Have you ever thought that NOT everyone has a mental model? But most people just memorize ready-made answers instead of understanding the problem?
I recommend reading The Programmers' Stone https://www.datapacrat.com/Opinion/Reciprocality/r0/index.html ---------------8<--------------- The work leading to this course was motivated by wondering why, in software engineering, there are some people who are one or two orders of magnitude more useful than most people. If this was true of bricklayers, the building industry would be very keen to find out why. The problem of course, is that one can film a bricklayer, and later analyze what is happening at leisure. One cannot even see what great programmers do, and for some reason they cannot explain what the difference is themselves, although most of them wish they could. ---------------8<---------------
In essence, this book argues that all people are divided into two non-intersecting subsets: Packers and Mappers: - Packers just remember ready-made answers. - Mappers are able to think and find answers on their own.