mordant wit

When you're interviewing you want a candidate that is going to think about the business context of the system and the utility that the software users are going to require—this is what makes David's answers to the copy file problem so good.

Programmers do spend some of their time putting together complex algorithms, but for most of us, most of the time, we're looking at building systems that deal with the much more general and far more woolly problems that involve people.

• What does the user want to achieve?


• How are they likely to go about it?


• Where are holes in the process?


• What are the exploits?


• Where is the return on investment going to come from?