It's hard to find people that can answer programming questions while applying for programming jobs. People generally do OK on the "soft" questions appropriate f

It's hard to find people that can answer programming questions while applying for programming jobs. People generally do OK on the "soft" questions appropriate for the phone. "Explain automatic testing." "What kind of editor / IDE do you use?" etc. I have been surprised when doing interviews how many people fail the basic soft questions. I have had people saying they were senior programmers not know what automatic testing was and who did not understand what an IDE was at all. (I have also had people tell me they preferred simple text editors to full blown IDEs, but they always knew what they were doing.) And I concur with your basic concept. Even granted the pressure of an interview, if they cannot do the really simple stuff like fizzBuzz on the board or at least get an answer that only has minor syntax issues than I would be very dubious of their ability to program seriously.