[bduerst]

But the question he is raising with the false positives is that it is a gating mechanism for what? The ability to talk shop on a white board?

[groby_b]

I'm assuming in my answer that the interview happens at a shop that cares about CS proficiency. (Mine certainly does ;)

If I have a false positive (i.e. you seem to understand CS but don't fit the company), it's not like the CS question is all that's asked. It's the launch point for a deeper discussion. That means a false positive hopefully gets caught in that later stage, but deep CS knowledge is sine qua non.

If that skill (knowledge of CS) doesn't matter to your shop, then yes, you shouldn't use it for gating.