[Negitivefrags]

The very nature of software is that you should only implement everything only once.

Clearly, this is not conducive to creating a repeatable test. Therefore any test must involve reproducing code that already exists.

If you are going to ask a candidate to reproduce code that already exists, it stands to reason that you would ask them to create something for which the definition is well understood in order to make the question fast to ask and require little explanation.

Therefore a linked list or hash table is a good example of a practical coding question. It's a good test to give you a negative result even if it's not a good test to get a positive result.

[enraged_camel]

No. If you want a test to accurately predict the candidate's job performance, it needs to be a work sample test that represents and is similar to the types of problems the candidate will be solving at that job.

In other words, unless the job is literally about finding creative ways to implement linked lists, then it is near worthless as an interview question. (I say "near worthless" because there is some value in seeing how candidates respond when given questions that are obviously nonsensical or just outright dumb.)