[logicalmonster]

As a developer that works in many different languages, frameworks, and libraries, I care fuck all about trying to memorize exact syntax and function names between so many different systems anymore.

From my perspective, the least illuminating interviews try and focus on language gotchas and memorization. In the real world, you have syntax highlighting and Google and Stackoverflow to lookup function names and minor syntax differences between many different technologies.

For me, the most illuminating types of interviews are conversations that focus on a smart approach to problem solving. You give somebody a general technical problem and a smart candidate would ask some intelligent clarifying questions about why it needs to be built, its usage, security, performance, costs, design and user-experience, etc. Then they give you a higher-level overview of what's involved in actually building it, testing it, and maintaining. The point isn't that they give you an exact answer that you were looking for, it's that they understand the right approach to creating systems.

[CSSer]

My current position’s interview went exactly as you described in the latter half of your comment. Sometime later after I was hired I asked why I wasn’t really thoroughly whiteboarded. My boss replied, “All I needed to know was that you had critical thinking skills and that you could solve problems. I was whiteboarded and I hated it. I remember walking away from the experience feeling like it said nothing about me,” and there was scarcely a single question he had asked me during the interview that I could give him a straightforward answer to. Almost every answer I gave him began with or included some version of, “Well, it depends. What about x?”