Writing pseudocode on paper will shift focus from correcting minor syntax errors to how well they understand concepts, which is arguably more important. It's st

Writing pseudocode on paper will shift focus from correcting minor syntax errors to how well they understand concepts, which is arguably more important. It's still worth requiring them to produce at least a tiny piece of working code, though. I helped interview someone who couldn't explain the trade-offs between a couple different designs for a simple class hierarchy, even an obviously wrong one included as a canary. Then we asked him to write one out, and, after stalling and getting several hints from us, he nervously scratched out a (naive) MySQL schema. Despite what his resume claimed, his only programming experience consisted of PHP and a fairly shallow understanding of SQL.