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That's the thing... you feel fizzbuzz is effective but the fact that it filtered out CS students from top 10 schools says more about the test then it does the s

That's the thing... you feel fizzbuzz is effective but the fact that it filtered out CS students from top 10 schools says more about the test then it does the student. Think about it, it takes way more work, way more intelligence to get into and graduate from a top 10 school then it does to learn how to pass a fizzbuzz test. I can 100% tell you that ALL CS grads from top 10 schools can pass fizz buzz given a day to do it. That being said I can also say literally most of your coworkers who are administering the fizz buzz test will not be able to ever attend a top 10 school given a lifetime to prepare. It is incredulous to me that people can literally dismiss an MIT candidate because he didn't pass a fizzbuzz test. Do you not realize that it is 100x easier to learn programming then it is to get into MIT? People need to get it through their heads. Programming is actually really, really easy. That's why there's so many people who can learn how to do it without going to college. But instead I see most people thinking that they are so intelligent they didn't need to go to college because they can just learn programming.... That may be partially true, but most of what I see is actually just people learning programming because they COULDN'T get into university. But it still begs the question... what is making an MIT student fail a fizzbuzz test? It's like failing to recite a paragraph out loud with zero stuttering to an audience who is judging your future career. How could one possibly be so stupid and not stutter? If you stutter it must mean you can't speak english, just like how if you fail a fizzbuzz test is must mean you can't program. To be honest I don't know why so many programmers fail. But I'm honestly pretty sure fizzbuzz is so dreadfully easy that there is some other factor that is influencing this high failure rate.

gwbas1c 7y ago
> To be honest I don't know why so many programmers fail. Because many people are not capable of programming. More importantly, the school you go to has nothing to do with your capability of a programmer. I worked with quite a few people in my CS department who couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Most were still very bright people who I assume figured out successful careers. I suspect a lot of the recent CS grads who can't do fizzbuzz end up following careers that don't require programming. It's also important to understand that Computer Science is not Software Engineering. Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematical field. Don't conflate the two.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  >Because many people are not capable of programming. You think too highly of the field. Programming is easy. Everyone, and I mean everyone can do it and eventually become good at it, especially fizz buzz. >I suspect a lot of the recent CS grads who can't do fizzbuzz end up following careers that don't require programming. Nah, more than likely they learn the fizzbuzz question and still become programmers because programming is easy. It takes time to learn programming like it takes time to become good at basic algebra or calculus, but literally anyone can do it. >It's also important to understand that Computer Science is not Software Engineering. Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematical field. Don't conflate the two. The two fields are intricately related. Most junior devs who lack the academic rigor like to separate the fields into a dichotomy and use this dichotomy as an excuse to justify the lack of expertise on the academic side. After a certain amount of time you'll realize that all of programming is rehashing the same concepts over and over again just in a new framework/language. To gain deeper insight into the nature of computer programming and engineering and to actually become better, the dichotomy must be eliminated. In the upper echelons of Software engineering, people will realize that computer science and software engineering merge to become the same thing. Juniors have yet to realize this. Take this for example. Did you know that a unit test does not guarantee correctness of a function? To guarantee correctness of a function you'd have to write a unit test for every possible input of a function. Did you know that computer science offers a way to do prove your program 100% correct without writing a single unit test? This is an example of a merger of engineering and theory. A computer is a deterministic machine amenable to proof yet we choose to treat it like a black box and test it as it was a chaotic system that needs to be tamed. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methodologies but I illustrate this here to show you that SE and CS are in fact different aspects of the same thing.
  - gwbas1c 7y ago
    Computer Science has very little to do with unit testing. Look at things like theoretical computer science and category theory. The word "class" comes right out of basic category theory. (You don't need any category theory to program a computer, but it directly influenced object oriented programming.) And, if you think programming is easy, consider yourself lucky. Take the time to learn some soft skills. Maybe you'll understand your downvotes.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Computer science != software engineering. > Programming is actually really, really easy. Perhaps. Software engineering is hard, though, and it is not the same as CS. We turn out these CS degrees, and then we expect that they can do software engineering. That said, fizz buzz may not be the best way to tell if people can do software engineering, either...
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  Software engineering is easy. Most people are familiar with it as an aspect of canned design principles to ensure safety and scalability. You can read about it all in books or internet articles and come up with it on your own. Have unit testing, have integration testing... make it modular... SOLID, write layers, yada yada yada also very easy. I always hear people say that Computer science != software engineering but really it's the same thing at the upper echelons. Rather than using your gut and all these anecdotal "principles" spewed out by people like Martin Fowler, design pattern books, or books on testing and agile you can actually use theory and science to guide your software engineering decisions. Let's put it this way. Software engineering is the only engineering discipline where people can get away with not knowing science and mathematics and still build systems that can run. The effective and elite software engineer lets theory and science guide his decisions as well to make systems that are better. I do agree with you that fizzbuzz is missing something.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    This is so over-the-top that I can't tell if it's parody, trolling, or just horribly mistaken. In case you're serious, though, you clearly have no clue what software engineering is. Yes, it includes some of the things you mention. No, it's not the same thing as CS at the upper echelons. Yes, you should include theory and science in your software engineering decisions, but no, just (CS) theory and science isn't going to be enough. BTW, because I don't know how to contact you to tell you this: Your HN profile says "Actively searching for opportunities. email me if interested", but doesn't actually provide an email address.
    - 7y ago
sn9 7y ago
I feel like you and everyone else are missing the obvious explanation: people who claim to be from a top 10 CS program who can't solve FizzBuzz in a few minutes lied about their background. I find it hard to believe that anyone who has spent more than a week programming couldn't solve FizzBuzz. Even if they somehow weren't familiar with the modulo operator, you could just explain how it worked. FizzBuzz is a way of easily filtering con artists.
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  You could be right. At the same time as unrealistic as it may be, I feel during interviews smart qualified people just screw up and have brain farts all the time. An interview is almost like public speaking combined with an intense time based coding competition without allowing you to use an IDE. I think a good number of these guys are lying. I agree with you. But I also think a good number are honest and actually failing.

gwbas1c 7y ago

> To be honest I don't know why so many programmers fail. Because many people are not capable of programming. More importantly, the school you go to has nothing to do with your capability of a programmer. I worked with quite a few people in my CS department who couldn't program their way out of a paper bag. Most were still very bright people who I assume figured out successful careers. I suspect a lot of the recent CS grads who can't do fizzbuzz end up following careers that don't require programming. It's also important to understand that Computer Science is not Software Engineering. Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematical field. Don't conflate the two.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
>Because many people are not capable of programming. You think too highly of the field. Programming is easy. Everyone, and I mean everyone can do it and eventually become good at it, especially fizz buzz. >I suspect a lot of the recent CS grads who can't do fizzbuzz end up following careers that don't require programming. Nah, more than likely they learn the fizzbuzz question and still become programmers because programming is easy. It takes time to learn programming like it takes time to become good at basic algebra or calculus, but literally anyone can do it. >It's also important to understand that Computer Science is not Software Engineering. Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematical field. Don't conflate the two. The two fields are intricately related. Most junior devs who lack the academic rigor like to separate the fields into a dichotomy and use this dichotomy as an excuse to justify the lack of expertise on the academic side. After a certain amount of time you'll realize that all of programming is rehashing the same concepts over and over again just in a new framework/language. To gain deeper insight into the nature of computer programming and engineering and to actually become better, the dichotomy must be eliminated. In the upper echelons of Software engineering, people will realize that computer science and software engineering merge to become the same thing. Juniors have yet to realize this. Take this for example. Did you know that a unit test does not guarantee correctness of a function? To guarantee correctness of a function you'd have to write a unit test for every possible input of a function. Did you know that computer science offers a way to do prove your program 100% correct without writing a single unit test? This is an example of a merger of engineering and theory. A computer is a deterministic machine amenable to proof yet we choose to treat it like a black box and test it as it was a chaotic system that needs to be tamed. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methodologies but I illustrate this here to show you that SE and CS are in fact different aspects of the same thing.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  Computer Science has very little to do with unit testing. Look at things like theoretical computer science and category theory. The word "class" comes right out of basic category theory. (You don't need any category theory to program a computer, but it directly influenced object oriented programming.) And, if you think programming is easy, consider yourself lucky. Take the time to learn some soft skills. Maybe you'll understand your downvotes.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Computer science != software engineering. > Programming is actually really, really easy. Perhaps. Software engineering is hard, though, and it is not the same as CS. We turn out these CS degrees, and then we expect that they can do software engineering. That said, fizz buzz may not be the best way to tell if people can do software engineering, either...

crimsonalucard 7y ago
Software engineering is easy. Most people are familiar with it as an aspect of canned design principles to ensure safety and scalability. You can read about it all in books or internet articles and come up with it on your own. Have unit testing, have integration testing... make it modular... SOLID, write layers, yada yada yada also very easy. I always hear people say that Computer science != software engineering but really it's the same thing at the upper echelons. Rather than using your gut and all these anecdotal "principles" spewed out by people like Martin Fowler, design pattern books, or books on testing and agile you can actually use theory and science to guide your software engineering decisions. Let's put it this way. Software engineering is the only engineering discipline where people can get away with not knowing science and mathematics and still build systems that can run. The effective and elite software engineer lets theory and science guide his decisions as well to make systems that are better. I do agree with you that fizzbuzz is missing something.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  This is so over-the-top that I can't tell if it's parody, trolling, or just horribly mistaken. In case you're serious, though, you clearly have no clue what software engineering is. Yes, it includes some of the things you mention. No, it's not the same thing as CS at the upper echelons. Yes, you should include theory and science in your software engineering decisions, but no, just (CS) theory and science isn't going to be enough. BTW, because I don't know how to contact you to tell you this: Your HN profile says "Actively searching for opportunities. email me if interested", but doesn't actually provide an email address.
  - 7y ago

sn9 7y ago

I feel like you and everyone else are missing the obvious explanation: people who claim to be from a top 10 CS program who can't solve FizzBuzz in a few minutes lied about their background. I find it hard to believe that anyone who has spent more than a week programming couldn't solve FizzBuzz. Even if they somehow weren't familiar with the modulo operator, you could just explain how it worked. FizzBuzz is a way of easily filtering con artists.

crimsonalucard 7y ago
You could be right. At the same time as unrealistic as it may be, I feel during interviews smart qualified people just screw up and have brain farts all the time. An interview is almost like public speaking combined with an intense time based coding competition without allowing you to use an IDE. I think a good number of these guys are lying. I agree with you. But I also think a good number are honest and actually failing.