> The best coding tests are those that demonstrate you know how to code applications relevant to the job Exactly. I am extremely confused as to why puzzle exam

> The best coding tests are those that demonstrate you know how to code applications relevant to the job Exactly. I am extremely confused as to why puzzle exams are common. Why can't the exams cover things that normal developers work through all the time? Things like reading existing code, improving error handling, debugging, basic performance optimization (e.g. don't do unnecessary work inside the for-loop), refactoring, etc. When I was an interviewer I gave some code samples to a candidate. The code would have all sorts of problems in it and I asked how the code could be improved. If the candidate couldn't identify basic problems then it was a red flag. For example, I made the code catch all exception types and ignore them. If you're a developer and can't tell me "You probably shouldn't do that" then you're not ready for production work. When I ask, "What can be done to improve it?" the minimum I expect is "Log the error" or "Don't ignore the error. Propagate it to the caller" or "catch only specific exceptions". Funny enough, I once had a boss who wouldn't make the cut based on my example above. We begged him to stop committing code.