My thought process is roughly "Okay. Which language? Is it null-terminated, random addressable, or mutable? Do I get compiler errors or unit tests? Should I buffer manually? Do I have a signature? Can I assume single-width characters? Should I ask?"

caveat: The question needs to be asked right. Instead of "here's a task I need you to perform", it should be "can you walk me through how you would solve a task like this?".