Extra Cubing Discussions

[achyut1]

So, yeah I have been recently learning 3 styles method of Blindfold solving and more than likely going for a software developer career. So, I just wanted to see if there is anyone out there who know both( Blinding and coding) and give some insights on the comparison of the " difficulty level" in each of them. I mean, one can wonder if a person can conquer "blind solving" the cube with the method of 3 styles, then, how hard would it be to learn coding and everything else relate to the term, say, "Engineering"...

 

[Mike Hughey]

I'm sure there are people who will disagree with this opinion, but I have on several occasions at work mentioned that I think it might be a pretty good test for a prospective employee (software developer) if we could give them a written set of instructions (not a video - too easy that way) on how to solve blindfolded, on, say, a Friday, and then ask them to come back on Monday and solve a cube blindfolded (given some tries to do it, and of course a close miss would be probably good enough, assuming they could explain pretty well why they think they missed it). It wouldn't be proof that they would be a good software developer, but I think that if they can't do it, they probably don't have much chance of being a good developer.

Of course, such a test would be completely impractical (and undoubtedly some potentially good candidates would think it was a stupid test, so it might filter out some good candidates), so it's just a thought experiment anyway. But I think that being able to figure out how to solve a cube blindfolded, especially from a written set of instructions rather than something like a video, correlates to the type of learning and mental organization skills that are some of the necessary traits for a being good software developer.

 

[xyzzy]

I'm sure there are people who will disagree with this opinion, but I have on several occasions at work mentioned that I think it might be a pretty good test for a prospective employee (software developer) if we could give them a written set of instructions (not a video - too easy that way) on how to solve blindfolded, on, say, a Friday, and then ask them to come back on Monday and solve a cube blindfolded (given some tries to do it, and of course a close miss would be probably good enough, assuming they could explain pretty well why they think they missed it). It wouldn't be proof that they would be a good software developer, but I think that if they can't do it, they probably don't have much chance of being a good developer.

Of course, such a test would be completely impractical (and undoubtedly some potentially good candidates would think it was a stupid test, so it might filter out some good candidates), so it's just a thought experiment anyway. But I think that being able to figure out how to solve a cube blindfolded, especially from a written set of instructions rather than something like a video, correlates to the type of learning and mental organization skills that are some of the necessary traits for a being good software developer.

On the surface an interesting idea, but my impression from reading HN too much is that (competent) coders don't really like "creative" interview exercises—at least give them something related to coding! Learning a letter scheme and algs like T perm and Y perm might seem trivial to us, but to a complete beginner this could take more than just a spare weekend.

I like the idea, but it'll probably be a disaster in practice, haha. If we were to go with this, I'd actually just give text instructions that mostly taught Old Pochmann except for parity, and then see if they can figure out how to fix parity. (That'll tell you something about whether they care about code coverage and all that stuff, I'll assume.)

 

[Mike Hughey]

The parity fix idea is a nice one. And yeah, I admit it's really not practical.