alt Hacker NewsSounds a little bit like the stories from Feynman, e.g.: https://enlightenedidiot.net/random/feynman-on-brazilian-edu...
The students had memorized everything, but understood nothing. Add in access to generative AI, and you have the situation that you had with your interview.
It's a good reminder that what we really do, as programmers or software engineers or what you wanna call it, is understanding how computers and computations work.
There's a quote I love from Feynman
I have no doubt he'd be repeating it loudly now, given we live in a time where we developed machines that are optimized to fool ourselves.It's probably also worth reading Feynman's Cargo Cult Science: https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/cargocult.html