[ClayFerguson]

Seems like something that Google or Microsoft would ask as an interview question. You have all day to complete it, on your laptop, but once done, no matter how much code it is, they want it transcribed from your computer onto a physical white-board, because the only thing they know how to read is white-boards. If you tell them they are crazy and try to end the interview right then and there, you are hired, because you have guts, and you know what can and cannot be done, and will not waste your time with jerks.

[mrqwerty]

I don't get this. I could easily transcribe anything I could write in a day into a diagrammatic representation. Hell, I could do it for anything I could write given a large enough whiteboard. It might consist of complicated flow diagrams or fragments of mathematics, but it would convey the salient points. This seems like fanatical code worship, "code is the only appropriate representation for all analytic thought". Nonsense. Maths, state diagrams, uml, even prose are useful and in combination adequate languages.

[jebediah]

He said transcribed, I guess he meant letter by letter

[ClayFerguson]

I was making fun of how in love some interviewers are with the whiteboard. I can write great code, but not up on a damn whiteboard -- kina because I do this thing called "typing". Also I'm making fun of the absolutely ridiculous complexity of many of the 'brain teaser' type interview questions. IMO the correct response to a brain-teaser interview question is to talk out. Better yet, tell them BEFORE the interview you WILL walk out IF the try that route.

[ClayFerguson]

Typo: "Talk out" was supposed to be "Walk out". Looks like you only have limited time to edit or something, because it won't let me fix that. Somebody please ding my karma again, I'm trying to see if I can make it go negative.