It's ok to not have an answer.
People cargo cult because there isn't enough time to exhaustively research every topic from scratch. Civilization exists because we blindly trust whatever methods seem to work, and then iterate on them.
> Cargo cult programming can also refer to the practice of applying a design pattern or coding style blindly without understanding the reasons behind that design principle. Some examples are adding unnecessary comments to self-explanatory code, overzealous adherence to the conventions of a programming paradigm, or adding deletion code for objects that garbage collection automatically collects.
Installing an app from the store is not cargo culting. Playing with a new framework is not cargo culting. Trying a new order at the donut shop is not cargo culting.
the problem really is that results for interview process does not seem to reliably add up to anything, there are no reasons behind any interview methodology in the traditional cargo culting sense because there is no interview methodology really founded on reason, it's mumbo jumbo all the way down.
But back to my original point some posts up, everybody has at some point taken something on faith as a best practice that works without understanding why.
Some examples where cargo cult programming are concerned are adding unnecessary comments to self-explanatory code - but how about also one I've had requesting the removal of explanatory comments from code because the code should explain itself (comment was something like, have done it this way instead of what might seem like the more reasonable way ..example code.. because of a bug in Safari that means X happens, etc. etc, if you want to removal or change to better method please check that Safari works now and this place actually wanted it removed because they preferred not to have comments in code!)
Or how about this one which I am old enough to have done: putting your script tags in the head of the document because this was a best practice (before async and defer attributes, I'm talking 1999-2000 here)
Hell many of the best practices around CSS usage have depending on the year been the exact opposite of some other earlier best practice. And many frontend developers do it because they don't have the time or evidently the inclination to really learn CSS.
Hey, many best practices regarding CSS at various times are based around the fact that frontend developers don't want to learn to use it.
Now you might say those are not really examples of cargo culting, but I think they are somewhat close - if you are using a naming convention to avoid learning how something works then you don't really know why you are using the naming convention because the purpose of that convention is to keep you from that knowledge.
anyway getting off track here, I just think that saying you are not going to work at a place that has cargo culted its interview process does not tell you anything about the overall quality of the place, because everyone has cargo culted something, just like many fine developers when setting up their React projects have said oh, everyone uses Webpack we'll do that as our build process - they know they need a build, but why Webpack? They don't really know (me neither, every time I've ever encountered Webpack I've always ended up wondering why!? Generally the answer is because that's what the tutorials had, everyone used it, they didn't give any thought, but now we're stuck with it)
