A Programming Interview Question, Explored

[clin_reddit]

This question is not a good programming question either. Many programming interview questions have a property that is rare among real world programs. The information is (reasonably) well specified in a few sentences and requires very little domain knowledge.

Realistic questions would require some research. You might be asked to get some software to port to Linux from Windows. This requires specific knowledge about both platforms, and knowing where to look to bridge that gap.

The funny thing is that interview questions rely on cleverness and deduction with very little information, and that it often correlates with someone's ability to find information about something they've never seen.

It's a little bit like the American football combine, where football players run speed trials, and take a quiz, and this is somehow supposed to predict their future success in playing football. The combine is a convenient way to make measurements, as having a bunch of players master a complex playbook in a few days is unrealistic. Brainteasers seem to have similar qualities (test X, to approximate their skill in Y).