From: Thomas Wieczorek <wieczo.yo@...>
Date: 2007-06-01T23:23:11+09:00
Subject: Re: [QUIZ] FizzBuzz (#126)

Fizzbuzz has nothing with the Microsoft "How many Ping Pong balls fit
in a Jumbojet" questions. It got a lot of feedback at
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html .
Another one used it to find out if CS graduates can program.

2007/6/1, Hans Fugal <fugalh@zianet.com>:
>
> Done, 4 times over. Not a bad quiz though my answers will probably be
> considered boring and would be denounced by the fools using this tactic
> to hire people as "unimaginative" or "lacking creativity and whizbang
> problem-solving skills".
>
> I feel compelled to point out that it was Microsoft who started this
> whole mess, and they quickly figured out it was selecting the wrong
> people and they don't do it anymore. But the cat's out of the bag, and
> now every wannabe shop thinks that's the way to find smart people. It's
> not, it's the way to find people who are good at solving puzzles under
> pressure, and in the worst case to find people who are good at finding
> ridiculously clever (but unreadable/unmaintainable) answers to puzzles
> under pressure.
>
> As we all know, good software development is not about solving little
> puzzles. It's about reasoning about problems large and small and finding
> the most obvious and readable solution (and sometimes optimizing the
> inner loop).
>
> Maybe I would try this in a job interview. I might state the problem and
> say: "this is not a trick question nor hard - just write the code they
> way you normally would." If they write the boring answer, they get
> points in my book. If they write some clever answer, they get demerits.
> If they can't write code at all, and I didn't realize they wouldn't be
> able to, I go sit in a corner and pout.
>
>