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Sure, no one needs to write strcmp using primitives anymore, but the task of doing so exercises the same mental processes that are involved in orchestrating the various components when handling a web request.

I don't know what strcmp is in the way that you're using it. Does that make me a bad web developer?

Something orthogonal to this came up recently on Reddit, and it was observed that in the real world (anecdotally), 95% of professional programmers don't know what the Lyskov Substitution Principle is.




I think that most interviewers will happily give you the definition of strcmp if you don't already know it. If you're not a bad web developer, you'll happily come up with some code on a whiteboard that meets the definition.

Anecdotally, perhaps, 95% of professional programmers don't know the definition of the words, "Lyskov Substitution Principle". That's not the same as not knowing what it is.


Two weeks ago I interviewed at a subsidiary of a major web property, and "[w]hat is the Lyskov Substitution Principle?" was on a written test they gave me.


I would have told them that I had no idea what that was, but then told them what the "Liskov Substitution Principle" (named after Barbara Liskov of MIT) was. I mean seriously, if a company can't spell, do you want to work there? :-)




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