I use a similar tactic myself whenever I'm interviewing people - think of it as "FizzBuzz" on steroids. It's an easy way to: a) see if you're a decent programm

I use a similar tactic myself whenever I'm interviewing people - think of it as "FizzBuzz" on steroids. It's an easy way to: a) see if you're a decent programmer, ie. are there any obvious bugs/SQL injections/limitations, and b) get you to talk about why you've coded something a particular way, what's good about it, etc, etc. Essentially an ice breaker question. The other option is for me to try and find something that you've done online (eg. an open source project) and ask questions about that, but some people might think it creepy, so I try and get you to contribute code first.