[chrshawkes]

How often does one have to reverse a string? What is the purpose of such a dumb test? How often have you had to do such a thing in the real world (outside of tests such as interview questions?)

I suppose you could make the argument we do have to reverse arrays, but strings? Give me a break, only idiot programmers spend their time practicing for useless programming interview questions.

[foo101]

Does one really need to practice to reverse a string? Do we now live in an age where a programmer cannot reverse a string purely from basic knowledge about programming and common-sense?

Reversing a string takes 2 minutes or less even if all you know is how to work with strings and how to write a for-loop.

[chadash]

I'm not sure if you have ever been involved in the hiring process from the first stage of screening resumes, but my experience has been that when you post a developer job, many people will apply with very weak coding skills and those people need to be weeded out. Some of them have strong-looking resumes, but I often come across people who stretch the truth on their resumes. So when I do a phone screen, I start out with a basic question that surprisingly weeds out a lot of people. I let candidates code in a language of their choice after hearing the question.

Is reversing a string something I do in the real world? Very very rarely if ever. But it's not meant to be a question that simulates a real world coding problem. The point is that it's a very simple problem that anyone proficient in almost any coding language should be able to do. And I don't know anyone I've worked with who wouldn't be able to do this in 5 minutes or less, with or without practice.