[FreebytesSector]

If a person is a self-taught programmer with ten years of experience working in a good company, then you are obviously programming for that company in a sufficient capacity even if you are unable to solve puzzles offered up by human resource managers that found them on Google by typing in "Questions for Programming Interviews." Programming is not about being able to solve brain teasers. Programming is about being able to deliver quality code. If the language handles most of these data structures for you or if you have used them before without actually considering it, then you obviously know their importance even if you cannot put it into words under stress. Do not degrade people that cannot repeat verbatim some useless information they read in a book or solve brain teasers in minutes (unless they had already seen those puzzles.) Being able to work hard, clean, in a team, and supply a functional product on time according to specifications are the most important traits.

[jes5199]

Sure - so I prefer to ask people to write a small program that solves a small, practical task. And I try to make it feel like we're pair programming, instead of just me watching them code, so we can see what it's like to collaborate.

[papsosouid]

You are the only one who said anything about brain teasers and puzzles. The parent lamented the fact that so many programmers can not solve basic programming problems. Fizzbuzz for example. If you can't write fizzbuzz, you are not qualified for a programming job. It has nothing to do with computer science, or brain teasers people googled, and everything to do with writing actual working code to accomplish a trivially simple goal.

[FreebytesSector]

I had to look up "FizzBuzz" to know what you mean, but you are correct. (I have actually been asked to write programs like this, and this is great even if it is minimal. I think the questions may need to be a bit more complex than this, but at least it is possible to solve in one sitting.) Asking an applicant to write simple programs like this would be good. Or, if the person is a front-end JavaScript developer, you can ask them how they would handle thumbnail mouseovers to display larger versions of the images in a separate div. Things like this are fine and have purpose. Asking a database administrator about the difference between joins makes sense. Another question might be how would you write a class to represent a deck of cards including methods for shuffling the deck. In comparison, sometimes you will have technical questions thrown at you that have no real world applications or literal brain teasers, and I think those types of questions are pointless. There is a difference between asking programming questions and asking programming puzzles, and I wanted to voice the opinion that puzzles should not be misconstrued to the point of suggesting that people cannot program because they cannot solve them.

Real programming projects are best. I think one of the best methods would be to give a person a reasonable assignment that should only take a couple hours to complete (if that long) and ask for the results within a few days. (This will give them plenty of time to clean it up, add surprising features, and create a nice design and front-end after they are finished with it. A day can be used for the promise of completion, and the remaining time can be used to overdeliver.)

[papsosouid]

>In comparison, sometimes you will have technical questions thrown at you that have no real world applications or literal brain teasers, and I think those types of questions are pointless

My point was that nobody else is talking about that. You just brought that up completely out of the blue, but in response to someone. When you reply to a post, those of us reading the thread tend to assume your post will in fact be in reply to the parent post, not a completely unrelated post just stating your opinion on something else entirely.