>Actually, there's nothing wrong with learning from books, but then you're right about questions: if book knowledge is a set of standard answers to standard questions, you won't get the best coder asking just standard questions. You actually want to know how does the candidate apply the (book or practical) knowledge to a real life situation. It's hard to simulate such a situation, but then that's why we are in search of questions like that.

You're right, and I have nothing against books! I believe it all depends on what you're looking for. Personally, I believe that correct logic and fast problem solving (mainly design problems) is more important than specific language skills. Both are important, only that I believe one is more important than the other. :) And I have seen programmers that can give correct answers to programming questions and can speek nicely about almost anything but are unable to write simple functions in any language. In the same time, those with very good and fast logic can write fairly good code in languages where they are not experts. The bottom line is that a correct solution that is not implemented in the best possible way is better than a wrong solution implemented perfectly. :)

And I am tired of all those programmers who know all the classes/functions/parameters by heart but cannot give correct solutions to practical problems.

>Though, I still don't like your train question - there are undefined defaults, like what does "train meet" mean? When the drivers can see the whites of each other's eyes ? :)
>
>Thinking it over, the question is proper for this sort of tests - you usually don't get requests which were thought out thoroughly; sometimes the best time saver is your ability to point out the impossiblity of implementation right away, before anyone starts any coding.

There you go. But this problem is a little more because: regardless the imprecision in defining this-or-that, the solution is in fact immediate (for any assumptions made on what "meet" means). There's really no need for any calculations or extra data. Surprisingly enough, too many people start to calculate distances, draw pictures, etc. Almost always the candidate asks for the distance between the two cities.

Given a problem like this, I appreciate a discussion on what "meet" means, but not the "jump" on pen&paper&thoughtless_calculations.

Anyway, I know that people don't like this kind of problems. I was only curious to see what will be the reaction on UT. :)

Vlad