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> it's only bad if you, as the interviewer, have a specific answer in mind.

This is true of all interview questions. The goal is to get a sense of how a candidate thinks about things and works through problems. Asking a sequence of clarifying questions is a huge part of that, and very similar to the process of requirements gathering in day to day work.



This question is better than the cliched "bad" interview question because the answer is actually relevant to a software engineer's work.




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