Re:The Best C++ Interview Question – Ever
by InclinedPlane on Monday December 07, 2009 @05:23PM
(#982347)
I'm torn on whether this is a good question or not. The important part of the question is definitely the "why?" step. Finding out whether a developer will question their own assumptions, fall back to solid knowledge and ask questions to acquire the knowledge needed to proceed or if they will simply bumble down the garden path of ignorance, making things up as they go with no basis in fact other than a gut feeling is very important.
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It's just a language-specific variant of a 'Microsoft problem': you don't want the answer, you want to watch the process. It's similarly useful in theory. But in practice I think it has the same key failing: Performance is too skewed in interview situations for it to give you consistently useful insight into candidate fitness.
If you want to thin out a hundred otherwise-equivalent candidates - knock yourself out. But at that point you might as well be flipping coins.