[mmorett]

"That you could go away and learn what color the middle wire is is great. But the guy next to you has been fixing wiring in distributor caps for years. And right now, I need people that know what color the middle wire is."

If you're hiring a mechanic, yes. However, the analogy was pointing out that the person being asked the question was a potential car renter. That specific knowledge is not relevant as a car renter.

[biot]

Now you're torturing the analogy. The equivalent programmer translation is "What is the middle parameter to this library method?" I'm sure most people competent at using Google can tell you in 60 seconds what that parameter is. In a large enough company you can afford to take the productivity hit as someone who is "smart and gets things done" gets up to speed on a new technology or with new libraries. However, if you're in a small team and you need to execute on your business fast without holding up development, you want someone who is "smart and gets things done" and also knows that library inside out.

[lessnonymous]

Yes, the analogy is silly.

[hatcravat]

Actually, I think you misunderstand the analogy. The color of the middle wire on the distributor is something you'd like a prospective mechanic to know, so he isn't learning on your time. It isn't, however, something that is in any way relevant to driving a car. I think this is why your comment provoked such hostile responses.

The programmer equivalent of the middle wire color question is something like, "Is the 3-phase power supply on XYZ mainframe wired in a delta or wye configuration? As a followup, what is the input frequency tolerance?" A sysadmin might need to know that, and an electrician certainly would, but it is far, far outside the purview of a programmer. [Edit: I'm assuming the programmer to be someone writing software running on the mainframe, not the firmware for a microcontroller in the power supply]

Maybe you're just a very good interviewer and haven't had to deal with the 90% that are crap? :+)