Every time I read Raganwald I feel like I'm not good enough of a programmer :) I'd fail that test, I don't even algorithms, and I've been programming for over 10 years.
You're likely fine. These types of things are more to inflate the ego of the person writing them than to offer any real insight into the quality of programmer they'd be screening.
I don't get it. Why not just test for net sum of the directions for a finite number of iterations? If the net sum is zero, there is a loop and if not, the program halts. Am I missing something?
I think this is related to the “teleporting turtle” algorithm. Unless I misunderstand your suggestion, you’ll need a mechanism for checking a short length, then moving forward and checking a longer length (usually 2x) then moving forward and checking a longer length (4x the original) and so forth.
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