> In my previous company we used ask candidates to code a very simple task: reverse a string in Java, on the whiteboard or on paper. It is a trivial task but ma

> In my previous company we used ask candidates to code a very simple task: reverse a string in Java, on the whiteboard or on paper. It is a trivial task but many seasoned people failed it to the extent that we thought "you don't really know Java, do you?". At the end of a day of interviews for a consulting gig a number of years ago I was asked to sit in front of a workstation and type while most of the developers were watching. I asked "Type what?" and got the answer "Anything." I started typing a paragraph from my resume and after one sentence the interviewer said "Stop, that's fine. The last guy who made it through the interview couldn't do that." It turned out to be a fun project.