do you fail at FizzBuzz? simple prog test

[John Machin]

Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> Gabriel Genellina <gagsl-py2 at yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
>> I would like to write a similar problem without this non-programming  
>> distracting issues (that is, a problem simple enough to be answered in a  
>> few minutes, that requires only programming skills to be solved, and  
>> leaving out any domain-specific knowledge).
> 
> Another reason not to like the FizzBuzz example is that it's quite
> closely balanced between two reasonable approaches (whether to just
> special-case multiples of 15 and say 'FizzBuzz', or whether to somehow
> add the Fizz and the Buzz together in that case). The interviewee might
> reasonably guess that this distinction is what's being tested, and get
> unnecessarily stressed about it.
> 

For such a trivial problem, fifteen minutes is more than enough to 
present alternative answers. Perhaps the intention is to weed out those 
who do become unnecessarily stressed in such circumstances. Employers 
like to play tricks to see how interviewees respond e.g. hand over two 
pages of a listing of code in language X, announce that there are 10 
syntax errors, and ask the interviewee to find and circle all the syntax 
errors. Correct answer: 11 circles.