I wrote the "function to reverse a string" in a job interview once. Then the interviewer reminded me that strrev() had been part of the standard C library since K&R.
replyI'd been programming in C(++) for ~15 years by then and had never had the occasion to reverse a string. I still wonder whether that makes it a good job interview question, or a terrible one. Some of both probably.
And yet, some people argue that you shouldn’t ask a developer to align 3 “if” and 1 “for”!!!
replyThe energy spent arguing that those 4 instructions in a row “are not a mark of someone who can write code” would have better been spent firing them.
Firing people is problematic. I'd be okay with it if the economy wasn't utter trash. It's way better to do the work upfront and prefer false negatives over false positives.
replyEven better would be if we had a well-respected credential, so both employees and employers can both avoid these long interview loops. I'd much rather get hazed once in a big way than tons of little hazings over a life time.