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I'd give a bit of guidance. This can go so many ways. I can see many right but totally different answers.

In any interview, I kind of presume that the interviewer has a "perfect answer" in mind and is playing some game where I basically need to guess what number they're thinking of.

I'd make it clear that anything is ok. Just go some direction

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Oh definitely. I start with very basic syntax level changes. I want to hear the candidate say "switch case or if/else tree" within the next 20 mins at the least (for SDE I).

And the problem can be scaled to any complexity. Distributed/Design/Data Storage

I'd actually ask under what conditions leaving it exactly as-is is the right decision.

If they give a compelling enough set of answers, I'd just skip the rest of the exercise and be done.

After learning how to do anything, the next 20 years is about learning when not doing anything is the right move.

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