> The fact that there are whole industries built on training these puzzles is a big signal that you're wrong.
I'm not sure that logic alone is a compelling: It's conceivable that this secondary industry addresses a real gap in university curricula, or a need for ongoing training of experienced developers.
But I think your overall point still holds, because there's a consensus that a large number of Leetcode-like puzzles require familiarity with problems and solutions that hardly every come up in real professional software development, and aren't even good proxies for the abilities that do matter.
I'm not sure that logic alone is a compelling: It's conceivable that this secondary industry addresses a real gap in university curricula, or a need for ongoing training of experienced developers.
But I think your overall point still holds, because there's a consensus that a large number of Leetcode-like puzzles require familiarity with problems and solutions that hardly every come up in real professional software development, and aren't even good proxies for the abilities that do matter.