Comment by jemfinch

Basic programming like Pascal's triangle represents the easiest stuff we do on a day-to-day basis. We write code. Pascal's triangle is code. Would you rather be tested on your ability to comprehend a multi-kloc codebase and make correctness-preserving modifications to it? Would you rather be tested on your ability to integrate or upgrade third-party libraries in a massive existing codebase? Coding is the easiest thing we do on a day-to-day basis; if it's not representative of what we work on day-to-day, it's because it's easier than what we do, not because it's harder.

I was astonished at the 25 minutes you claimed this took you, so I did it myself. It took me about two minutes to write this, which worked the first time I tried it:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

    def pascal(i):
        if i == 0:
            return [1]
        else:
            L = pascal(i-1)
            ret = [1]
            for i in xrange(len(L)-1):
                ret.append(L[i] + L[i+1])
            ret.append(1)
            return ret
    
    if __name__ == '__main__':
        import sys
        print pascal(int(sys.argv[1]))

What problems did you encounter that required you to use a debugger? I'm genuinely curious, because it seems like such a simple problem.