Re: Simple Programming Challenge

From	John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.misc, comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject	Re: Simple Programming Challenge
Date	2025-11-12 08:07 -0800
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<20251112080756.00000989@gmail.com> (permalink)
References	<18774b74533f13ac$14097$3668313$802601b3@news.usenetexpress.com> <5L1RQ.59910$3VN7.27458@fx41.iad>

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On Wed, 12 Nov 2025 10:31:13 -0500
"Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Seems trivial, eh?
> > 
> > This is an interview question that I give to my applicants and no
> > one has passed yet.  
> 
> Why would anyone waste their time on such a lame project?

It's a trivial "are you even qualified to be here?" interview question,
but yeah, it's not a terribly interesting problem. Assuming you're not
on an architecture where division is computationally expensive, and I/O
is counted as "free," the only meaningful performance consideration is
branching.

(If you *are* on an architecture where division is expensive, it might
be interesting to exploit the fact that the sum of individual nybbles
in a word down to a single nybble - i.e., if sum >= 0x10, recurse - can
be compared against 0x5, 0xA, and 0xF to check for divisibility by five
and 0x3, 0x6, 0x9, 0xC, and 0xF for divisibility by three, but I'm not
sure whether that'd save you any time over Russian-peasant division.)

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Simple Programming Challenge Joe Fantastic <jf@linux.rocks> - 2025-11-12 15:19 +0000
  Re: Simple Programming Challenge "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2025-11-12 10:31 -0500
    Re: Simple Programming Challenge John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-11-12 08:07 -0800
    Re: Simple Programming Challenge ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-11-12 16:18 +0000
      Re: Simple Programming Challenge Joe Fantastic <jf@linux.rocks> - 2025-11-12 16:41 +0000
        Re: Simple Programming Challenge Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> - 2025-11-12 17:29 +0000
          Re: Simple Programming Challenge Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> - 2025-11-12 17:33 +0000
            Re: Simple Programming Challenge Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2025-11-13 00:00 +0000
              Re: Simple Programming Challenge Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> - 2025-11-13 10:45 +0000
        Re: Simple Programming Challenge Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-12 23:30 +0000
        Re: Simple Programming Challenge ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-11-13 13:24 +0000
          Re: Simple Programming Challenge Ralf Fassel <ralfixx@gmx.de> - 2025-11-13 16:16 +0100
      Re: Simple Programming Challenge Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-202511.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2025-11-12 18:37 +0100
    Re: Simple Programming Challenge Brock McNuggets <brock.mcnuggets@gmail.com> - 2025-11-12 20:05 +0000
      Re: Simple Programming Challenge "Joel W. Crump" <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2025-11-12 15:30 -0500
        Re: Simple Programming Challenge Brock McNuggets <brock.mcnuggets@gmail.com> - 2025-11-12 20:50 +0000
  Re: Simple Programming Challenge John McCue <jmclnx@gmail.com.invalid> - 2025-11-12 17:22 +0000
    Re: Simple Programming Challenge c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-11-12 23:57 -0500
  Re: Simple Programming Challenge Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-12 23:24 +0000

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