---
title: "Solving weird problems, and making others solve them as well"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/4/solving-weird-problems-and-making-others-solve-them-as-well.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/4/solving-weird-problems-and-making-others-solve-them-as-well.html"
published: "2004-06-04T09:09:00"
updated: "2004-06-04T09:09:00"
tags: [".Net Original"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Scott blogs about a weird problem he had with ASP.Net, and then asks “Could this be a good problem solver question for an interview?” Certainly, some people would take days to solve this problem. Personally I think I…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Solving weird problems, and making others solve them as well

By Roy Osherove June 4, 2004 In [.Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 4, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

[Scott blogs about](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=c5c30e5f-87b5-441d-a225-86bc0555a4f0) a weird problem he had with ASP.Net, and then asks “Could this be a good problem solver question for an interview?”

Certainly, some people would take days to solve this problem. Personally I think I would have taken less than 10 minutes. You see, I find that a lot of times the brute force approach works:) A re-boot would have solved it...

Of course - brute force often leaves you asking “so what actually went wrong there?“ , but [sometimes perfectionism is not the best thing](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/04/22.html).

But is it good for an interview? maybe just to see people coping with it on a timed basis. There should be **no need** to actually _finish_ on time, but just so that the interviewer would get a sense of how the person goes on to solve a problem. I think facing a problem like this I'd be kinda getting a pale-faced look, but I'd be able to solve it, especially now that Scott blogged about it. It's going to be plastered over the first search result in google tomorrow.... :)

## More in .Net Original

[All posts in .Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original)

- Jun 7, 2004

    ### [Israeli Blogger Dinner postponed](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/7/israeli-blogger-dinner-postponed.html)

- Jun 4, 2004

    ### [VB is rubbish? rubbish.](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/4/vb-is-rubbish-rubbish.html)

- Jun 4, 2004

    ### [Planning a daily, automatic build](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/4/planning-a-daily-automatic-build.html)

- Jun 4, 2004

    ### [More discussion about MS and agile methodologies](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/6/4/more-discussion-about-ms-and-agile-methodologies.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/