All six dimensions
Debugging
Deliberately unpleasant code with a real defect in it. Not a puzzle: the kind of function that accumulated over three years and four authors, where the fix can be one character.
What a candidate is asked to do
- 01Locate every defect in code written to be genuinely hard to read.
- 02Explain the mechanism, not just the symptom.
- 03Patch it without disturbing the behaviour around it.
How it is scored
What earns points
- Finding the actual root cause
- A minimal patch that leaves working behaviour alone
- Explaining why the bug produced the symptom it did
What loses points
- Rewriting the function to avoid understanding it
- Fixing the symptom while leaving the cause in place
Why it predicts the job
Debugging is the skill that does not transfer from tutorials. It is also where an engineer spends the worst hours of their week, so competence here compounds.