When I have done interviews, I too was truly surprised by how many "programmers" could not program even simple things. But I do think you should realize what t

When I have done interviews, I too was truly surprised by how many "programmers" could not program even simple things. But I do think you should realize what type of programmer you are looking for. Most of their questions mentioned assume a knowledge of C. I have not used C since high school, even in college it was optional for CS majors, and a lot of programmers majored in things other than CS (I started in math, I know another truly good programmer that started in nuclear physics). This is great if you are looking for C programmers, but I would not consider them basic things any developer should know.