Comment by kfajdsl
14 hours ago
For your examples, honestly yeah. A dev should familiar with the basic concepts of their language and tech stack. So yes, they should be able to understand a basic snippet of code without Google, an LSP, or even a computer. They should even be able to "write CTEs with a pencil and paper". I don't expect them to get the syntax perfect, but they should just know the basic tools and concepts enough to have something at least semantically correct. And they certainly should be able to understand the code produced by an AI tool for a take home toy project.
I say this as someone who would definitely be far less productive without Google, LSP, or Claude Code.
I’ve written huge queries and CTE’s in my career. But I haven’t done it recently. Personally, I’d need 10 minutes of google time to refresh my memory before being able to write much sql on paper, even with bad syntax. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad engineer because I don’t bother to memorise stuff that’s easily googleable.