swe-hiring/part3-taskcli/README.md

Part 3 — taskcli: fix three failing tests in Go

taskcli is a tiny interactive task tracker. You may never have written Go before — that is expected and fine. This part measures how you pick up a language you don't know yet, which is exactly what we said in the job description.

Try it out:

go run .          # interactive: add <title>, done <id>, list, quit
go test ./...     # three tests currently fail

Your task

1. Make the three failing tests pass by fixing the underlying bugs in store.go. The tests themselves are correct.
2. For each bug, fill in a short entry in WRITEUP.md: what was wrong, and why Go behaves that way. Three or four sentences per bug is plenty.

The write-up matters as much as the fix. "Changed X to Y" without the why tells us nothing about how you learn.

Do this one yourself

Use your AI tools as a tutor here, not as the author: ask what a pointer receiver is, not for the patch. The follow-up interview includes walking us through these three fixes from memory — code you didn't write is hard to defend live. (The other parts carry no such restriction; this one is specifically about how you learn.)

Hints for Go newcomers

• Error messages from go test include file and line numbers.
• The Tour of Go sections on methods, strings, and errors cover everything these bugs touch.
• gofmt -w . formats your code the one true way.