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We are interviewing for a software dev role and we made the first round in person to prevent cheating. The gap between people who learned pre ai vs post is imme

We are interviewing for a software dev role and we made the first round in person to prevent cheating. The gap between people who learned pre ai vs post is immense. I had a dev with supposedly 3 years experience and a degree in software who wouldn't have been able to write fizzbuzz without AI.

Retr0id 6mo ago
> I had a dev with supposedly 3 years experience and a degree in software who wouldn't have been able to write fizzbuzz without AI. If you remove the "without AI" and the end, I've been hearing similar anecdotes about fizzbuzz for years (isn't the whole point of fizzbuzz to filter out those candidates?)
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  While this is true, it seems undeniable that if you use AI to do everything for you, you will never learn the skills. I'm seeing a massive amount of developers submitting stuff for review and admitting they have no idea how it works and they just generated it.
- raincole 6mo ago
  Because "the next generation is ruined" is always a popular sentiment. It has been with us for at least two thousand years, and it surely won't go away in our lifetime. When this AI era's devs grow older they'll complain the newer generation can't even vide code too.
  - brookst 6mo ago
    I remember when everyone bemoaned the kids not knowing assembly language. How can anyone understand software if you don’t know assembly? “Kids these days don’t work as hard / know as much / value the important things” is as tired as it is universal.
    - jkubicek 6mo ago
      OK sure, but back when old heads were complaining about the kids not knowing assembly, those same kids knew C or Fortran or something. In 2026, if you call yourself a developer and can't solve FizzBuzz without help, it's hard to argue that you know anything useful at all.
      - brookst 6mo ago
        Do modern languages and compilers count as “help”? Because I could probably do fizzbuzz in x86 assembly, but it would take a while to page that back in, and I suspect most people who call themselves developers today simply could not do it without help.
        thaumasiotes 6mo ago
        > I could probably do fizzbuzz in x86 assembly How? Fizzbuzz requires you to produce output; that's not functionality that CPU instructions provide. You can call into existing functionality that handles it for you, but at that point what are you objecting to about the 'modern language'?
        rightbyte 6mo ago
        You'd just call printf from assembly by knowing the ABI by heart.
        brookst 6mo ago
        Well I could certainly assemble the string buffer. And if I can run dosbox, I can output to the screen buffer at 0xB800. I’m not objecting to modern languages, I’m just saying that using them fails the “can write fizzbuzz with no help” test to only a slightly lesser degree than using AI tools. They’re a complex compile- and runtime environment that most developers don’t truly understand.
    - unethical_ban 6mo ago
      The time may come when we can treat regular programming as a lower layer niche field the way we treat assembly today. I don't think we're close to that time yet. Just like as a kid I was told to prove my work by hand even if I could do it in my head, and just like we learned how to do calculus without a calculator and then learned how to use the calculator to get the same result, I think we still need the software field to learn programming concepts independent of the use of AI to create code. I don't think you can be a good "prompt engineer" for solid software in 2026 if you don't understand programming concepts and software architecture and flow.
  - delfinom 6mo ago
    ....Or you know it's actually true some of the times. Standardized test scores have bombed hard across the US in the last decade due to smartphones being wildly present in schools without control. Kids brains are legitimately rotted by a machines running software maximized to destroy the attention centers of their brains for life. AI is just the icing on the cake. These kids are so cooked with developmentally stunted brains that they are forced to use AI as a crutch to function.
- GrinningFool 6mo ago
  Some percentage of developers before AI were unable to code fizzbuzz. Some significantly higher percentage of them are not able to do so now. Saying there have always been bad developers doesn't change that there's a higher ratio of them now. No stats to back this up. Just interviews I've done recently and historically.
IanCal 6mo ago
Can’t say you’re wrong but the last anecdote describes many I’ve had to review for jobs long before LLMs. Fizzbuzz is a classic thing that shockingly many devs genuinely cannot do, even at home.
- sigmoid10 6mo ago
  Yeah, I've interviewed people like this 15 years ago. Degrees and experience mean nothing in this field. The best predictor I found was personal passion projects. Let them get as nerdy as possible, then you will see pretty quickly where their skills are at and what their limits are. And you will immediately filter out people who just studied CS because they heard you can make good money.
  - gedy 6mo ago
    I agree, however there are so many interviewers who will still treat that as some softball criteria and insist that unless you "prepare" for an interview by memorizing leetcode you are 100% a faker and liar.
    - jadar 6mo ago
      Maybe they themselves are fakers and liars / deeply insecure. I got bumped out of an interview rather rudely once because I blanked and couldn’t answer a trivia question about arrays.
  - wookmaster 6mo ago
    Completely agree with this, leetcode has become such a business now of memorization for interviews it’s useless to know if someone memorized a solution or not.
    - virgilp 6mo ago
      you can absolutely know. they do suspiciously well. you just give harder problems until they can't solve it. how they react/approach a problem that they can't immediately solve _is_ the interview - not the "how many things they solved correctly" part. That said - I seldom need people to be hardcore algorithm solvers What I typically did was a variation of fizzbuzz (can the candidate code very basic logic?) and then finding a bug or minor requirements extension in their online screening test/"homework" and asking them to solve that on the spot (did they write the code themselves/can they modify it). It's typically enough, there's diminishing returns to test more in-depth the programming skills - the rest you can discuss domain knowledge, general experience, working style etc.
baxtr 6mo ago
I wonder if you’re filtering for the right things. We usually hire for problem solving capabilities and not so much for technical know-how. That’s at least how I read your comment.
- Gigachad 6mo ago
  Ultimately in a software development role you need both technical know how and problem solving capabilities. This situation in particular was a React role so there is an expectation that when you list React as one of your skills on your resume then you know at least the basics of state, the common hooks, the difference between a reference to a value vs the value itself. These days you can do a surprising amount with AI without knowing what you are doing, but if you don't have any clue how things work you'll very quickly run in to problems you can't prompt away.
- gonzalohm 6mo ago
  Isn't wiring coding solving a problem? If the candidate can't do that then even if they use AI for coding how are they going to review the code properly?
andai 6mo ago
That's actually the origin of FizzBuzz! A puzzle invented to weed out the perplexing multitude of CS graduates who apparently cannot program. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
brookst 6mo ago
Isn’t this like interviewing accountants but prohibiting use of calculators or spreadsheets? I don’t care what someone can do without the tools of their trade, I care deeply about their quality of work when using tools.
- slowcache 6mo ago
  We would still expect an accountant to know the formula to arrive at the expected result if they did not have a calculator at hand
- weird-eye-issue 6mo ago
  You absolutely need to have some basic level of abilities if you are going to be operating AI coding tools for software that is going to have paying users.... I use these tools very very heavily I'm not against them at all and I don't scrutinize every single line of code that they write but it is very often that I catch it doing some brain dead stuff and if I didn't have a decade plus of experience I wouldn't know that it was brain dead.
  - lacewing 6mo ago
    I think we're rediscovering management from first principles. The main selling point of AI is that it writes code faster than you could. Checking it line by line undoes most of that benefit. In the same vein, there's no real benefit to leading a team if you plan on supervising every task. But here's the thing: for humans, this is manageable because we've come up with a number of mechanisms to select for dependable workers and to compel them to behave (carrot and stick: bonuses if you do well, prison if you do something evil). For LLMs, we have none of that. If it deletes your production database, what are you going to do? Have it write an apology letter? I've seen people do that. So I think that your answer - that you'll lean on your expertise - is not sufficient. If there are no meaningful consequences and no predictability, we probably need to have stronger constraints around input, output, and the actions available to agents.
    - weird-eye-issue 6mo ago
skeptic_ai 6mo ago
I developed for 15 years. I don’t think I can do with AI anymore. Why would I even want to do that? It’s like telling a car driver to build an engine.
- delecti 6mo ago
  It's more like asking a driver the laws for when traffic lights are out. It's not something that comes up often, but it's not completely outside the scope of the task either (I arguably don't even drive a car that has an engine).
- JambalayaJimbo 6mo ago
  As a car driver, you should understand a little about how your car works. What if you get a flat tire? At the very least, you should know not to drive on that flat tire. Software is full of leaky abstractions
mannanj 6mo ago
I first did fizz buzz about 10 years ago fresh out of college. Now, after 10 years in full stack and fully vibe coding, I forgot basic python syntax. An interview like yours would have false positives if you are checking for syntax because well, its like looking up spelling, I just ask the AI for the syntax inline.
- jaredklewis 6mo ago
  Which part of the syntax for fizzbuzz can you not recall from memory? The for loop? Printing to std out? The modulus operator? There’s almost nothing to forget? I’m just struggling to understand.
- 12_throw_away 6mo ago
  > I forgot basic python syntax If you cannot write "basic syntax" for any language then you are not a programmer, and certainly not a software engineer? This is not a value judgement, it's ok (probably good tbh) to not be a programmer. But you are wasting everyone's time by interviewing for a programming position in this case.
  - SquareWheel 6mo ago
    Personally, I forget syntax all the time. There's always a warm up period after I switch languages, and it takes me longer to be start writing good, idiomatic code. Like sure, I can probably write some python, but will it be pythonic? I might still be Java-minded for a while, trying to OOP my way into solutions. Earlier today I needed to write some PHP and couldn't remember if it used length, count, or size. I had to look it up. I've been doing this for 20 years.
    - funimpoded 6mo ago
      Same, I can't pass any test that relies on getting syntax correct. If you want me to fizzbuzz on a whiteboard in a language I've been writing dozens or more of lines of per day for a year up to and including the day before, and require that I don't mess up the syntax, I reckon I've got a coin-flip chance of passing at best (meanwhile, sure, of course the actual logic of fizzbuzz isn't tricky for me) I once got the method invocation syntax wrong for PHP in an interview. I'd written thousands of lines of PHP and had most-recently written some the week before. This, despite starting off my programming journey in editors with no hinting or automatic correction. If anything, I've gotten even worse about remembering syntax as I've gotten better at the rest of the job, but I was never great at it. I rely on surrounding code to remind me of syntax and the exact names of basic things constantly. On a blank screen without syntax hints and autocompletion, or a blank whiteboard, I'm guaranteed to look like a moron if you don't let me just write pseudocode. Been paid to write code for about 25 years. This has never been any amount of a problem on the job but is sometimes a source of stress in interviews and has likely lost me an offer or two (most of the sources of stress in an interview have little to do with the job, really)
Glohrischi 6mo ago
Don't worry, i never thought I would see someone unable to write fizzbuzz, but it happened 9 years ago. Also how many people work with linux and can't tell you what 'ls -alh' is doing is staggering (lets ignore the h, even al people struggle hard). People working with docker for YEARS and don't even understand how docker actually works (cgroups)... Interviewing was always a bag of emotions in sense of "holy shit my job is save your years to come" and "srsly? how? How do you still have a job?"
amarant 6mo ago
Meh. Before AI I've had "senior" colleagues with 10 and 8 years experience each, doing pair programming for 2 days straight, and in that time they hadn't managed to checkout a new branch in git. It's not even that they got distracted, they sat there trying, for 2 whole days, with concerned colleagues giving them hints like "have you tried checkout -b"... They didn't manage! How the hell do you work for a decade in this business without learning even the most basic git commands? Or at least how to look them up? Or how to use a gui? Incompetent devs is not a new thing.
- LeFantome 6mo ago
  It is ok to work somewhere that does not use git. But how do you not figure out how to do the basics given 30 mins and an Internet connection?
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

Retr0id 6mo ago

> I had a dev with supposedly 3 years experience and a degree in software who wouldn't have been able to write fizzbuzz without AI. If you remove the "without AI" and the end, I've been hearing similar anecdotes about fizzbuzz for years (isn't the whole point of fizzbuzz to filter out those candidates?)

Gigachad 6mo ago
While this is true, it seems undeniable that if you use AI to do everything for you, you will never learn the skills. I'm seeing a massive amount of developers submitting stuff for review and admitting they have no idea how it works and they just generated it.
raincole 6mo ago
Because "the next generation is ruined" is always a popular sentiment. It has been with us for at least two thousand years, and it surely won't go away in our lifetime. When this AI era's devs grow older they'll complain the newer generation can't even vide code too.
- brookst 6mo ago
  I remember when everyone bemoaned the kids not knowing assembly language. How can anyone understand software if you don’t know assembly? “Kids these days don’t work as hard / know as much / value the important things” is as tired as it is universal.
  - jkubicek 6mo ago
    OK sure, but back when old heads were complaining about the kids not knowing assembly, those same kids knew C or Fortran or something. In 2026, if you call yourself a developer and can't solve FizzBuzz without help, it's hard to argue that you know anything useful at all.
    - brookst 6mo ago
      Do modern languages and compilers count as “help”? Because I could probably do fizzbuzz in x86 assembly, but it would take a while to page that back in, and I suspect most people who call themselves developers today simply could not do it without help.
      - thaumasiotes 6mo ago
        > I could probably do fizzbuzz in x86 assembly How? Fizzbuzz requires you to produce output; that's not functionality that CPU instructions provide. You can call into existing functionality that handles it for you, but at that point what are you objecting to about the 'modern language'?
        rightbyte 6mo ago
        You'd just call printf from assembly by knowing the ABI by heart.
        brookst 6mo ago
        Well I could certainly assemble the string buffer. And if I can run dosbox, I can output to the screen buffer at 0xB800. I’m not objecting to modern languages, I’m just saying that using them fails the “can write fizzbuzz with no help” test to only a slightly lesser degree than using AI tools. They’re a complex compile- and runtime environment that most developers don’t truly understand.
  - unethical_ban 6mo ago
    The time may come when we can treat regular programming as a lower layer niche field the way we treat assembly today. I don't think we're close to that time yet. Just like as a kid I was told to prove my work by hand even if I could do it in my head, and just like we learned how to do calculus without a calculator and then learned how to use the calculator to get the same result, I think we still need the software field to learn programming concepts independent of the use of AI to create code. I don't think you can be a good "prompt engineer" for solid software in 2026 if you don't understand programming concepts and software architecture and flow.
- delfinom 6mo ago
  ....Or you know it's actually true some of the times. Standardized test scores have bombed hard across the US in the last decade due to smartphones being wildly present in schools without control. Kids brains are legitimately rotted by a machines running software maximized to destroy the attention centers of their brains for life. AI is just the icing on the cake. These kids are so cooked with developmentally stunted brains that they are forced to use AI as a crutch to function.
GrinningFool 6mo ago
Some percentage of developers before AI were unable to code fizzbuzz. Some significantly higher percentage of them are not able to do so now. Saying there have always been bad developers doesn't change that there's a higher ratio of them now. No stats to back this up. Just interviews I've done recently and historically.

IanCal 6mo ago

Can’t say you’re wrong but the last anecdote describes many I’ve had to review for jobs long before LLMs. Fizzbuzz is a classic thing that shockingly many devs genuinely cannot do, even at home.

sigmoid10 6mo ago
Yeah, I've interviewed people like this 15 years ago. Degrees and experience mean nothing in this field. The best predictor I found was personal passion projects. Let them get as nerdy as possible, then you will see pretty quickly where their skills are at and what their limits are. And you will immediately filter out people who just studied CS because they heard you can make good money.
- gedy 6mo ago
  I agree, however there are so many interviewers who will still treat that as some softball criteria and insist that unless you "prepare" for an interview by memorizing leetcode you are 100% a faker and liar.
  - jadar 6mo ago
    Maybe they themselves are fakers and liars / deeply insecure. I got bumped out of an interview rather rudely once because I blanked and couldn’t answer a trivia question about arrays.
- wookmaster 6mo ago
  Completely agree with this, leetcode has become such a business now of memorization for interviews it’s useless to know if someone memorized a solution or not.
  - virgilp 6mo ago
    you can absolutely know. they do suspiciously well. you just give harder problems until they can't solve it. how they react/approach a problem that they can't immediately solve _is_ the interview - not the "how many things they solved correctly" part. That said - I seldom need people to be hardcore algorithm solvers What I typically did was a variation of fizzbuzz (can the candidate code very basic logic?) and then finding a bug or minor requirements extension in their online screening test/"homework" and asking them to solve that on the spot (did they write the code themselves/can they modify it). It's typically enough, there's diminishing returns to test more in-depth the programming skills - the rest you can discuss domain knowledge, general experience, working style etc.

baxtr 6mo ago

I wonder if you’re filtering for the right things. We usually hire for problem solving capabilities and not so much for technical know-how. That’s at least how I read your comment.

Gigachad 6mo ago
Ultimately in a software development role you need both technical know how and problem solving capabilities. This situation in particular was a React role so there is an expectation that when you list React as one of your skills on your resume then you know at least the basics of state, the common hooks, the difference between a reference to a value vs the value itself. These days you can do a surprising amount with AI without knowing what you are doing, but if you don't have any clue how things work you'll very quickly run in to problems you can't prompt away.
gonzalohm 6mo ago
Isn't wiring coding solving a problem? If the candidate can't do that then even if they use AI for coding how are they going to review the code properly?

andai 6mo ago

That's actually the origin of FizzBuzz! A puzzle invented to weed out the perplexing multitude of CS graduates who apparently cannot program. https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

brookst 6mo ago

Isn’t this like interviewing accountants but prohibiting use of calculators or spreadsheets? I don’t care what someone can do without the tools of their trade, I care deeply about their quality of work when using tools.

slowcache 6mo ago
We would still expect an accountant to know the formula to arrive at the expected result if they did not have a calculator at hand
weird-eye-issue 6mo ago
You absolutely need to have some basic level of abilities if you are going to be operating AI coding tools for software that is going to have paying users.... I use these tools very very heavily I'm not against them at all and I don't scrutinize every single line of code that they write but it is very often that I catch it doing some brain dead stuff and if I didn't have a decade plus of experience I wouldn't know that it was brain dead.
- lacewing 6mo ago
  I think we're rediscovering management from first principles. The main selling point of AI is that it writes code faster than you could. Checking it line by line undoes most of that benefit. In the same vein, there's no real benefit to leading a team if you plan on supervising every task. But here's the thing: for humans, this is manageable because we've come up with a number of mechanisms to select for dependable workers and to compel them to behave (carrot and stick: bonuses if you do well, prison if you do something evil). For LLMs, we have none of that. If it deletes your production database, what are you going to do? Have it write an apology letter? I've seen people do that. So I think that your answer - that you'll lean on your expertise - is not sufficient. If there are no meaningful consequences and no predictability, we probably need to have stronger constraints around input, output, and the actions available to agents.
  - weird-eye-issue 6mo ago

skeptic_ai 6mo ago

I developed for 15 years. I don’t think I can do with AI anymore. Why would I even want to do that? It’s like telling a car driver to build an engine.

delecti 6mo ago
It's more like asking a driver the laws for when traffic lights are out. It's not something that comes up often, but it's not completely outside the scope of the task either (I arguably don't even drive a car that has an engine).
JambalayaJimbo 6mo ago
As a car driver, you should understand a little about how your car works. What if you get a flat tire? At the very least, you should know not to drive on that flat tire. Software is full of leaky abstractions

mannanj 6mo ago

I first did fizz buzz about 10 years ago fresh out of college. Now, after 10 years in full stack and fully vibe coding, I forgot basic python syntax. An interview like yours would have false positives if you are checking for syntax because well, its like looking up spelling, I just ask the AI for the syntax inline.

jaredklewis 6mo ago
Which part of the syntax for fizzbuzz can you not recall from memory? The for loop? Printing to std out? The modulus operator? There’s almost nothing to forget? I’m just struggling to understand.
12_throw_away 6mo ago
> I forgot basic python syntax If you cannot write "basic syntax" for any language then you are not a programmer, and certainly not a software engineer? This is not a value judgement, it's ok (probably good tbh) to not be a programmer. But you are wasting everyone's time by interviewing for a programming position in this case.
- SquareWheel 6mo ago
  Personally, I forget syntax all the time. There's always a warm up period after I switch languages, and it takes me longer to be start writing good, idiomatic code. Like sure, I can probably write some python, but will it be pythonic? I might still be Java-minded for a while, trying to OOP my way into solutions. Earlier today I needed to write some PHP and couldn't remember if it used length, count, or size. I had to look it up. I've been doing this for 20 years.
  - funimpoded 6mo ago
    Same, I can't pass any test that relies on getting syntax correct. If you want me to fizzbuzz on a whiteboard in a language I've been writing dozens or more of lines of per day for a year up to and including the day before, and require that I don't mess up the syntax, I reckon I've got a coin-flip chance of passing at best (meanwhile, sure, of course the actual logic of fizzbuzz isn't tricky for me) I once got the method invocation syntax wrong for PHP in an interview. I'd written thousands of lines of PHP and had most-recently written some the week before. This, despite starting off my programming journey in editors with no hinting or automatic correction. If anything, I've gotten even worse about remembering syntax as I've gotten better at the rest of the job, but I was never great at it. I rely on surrounding code to remind me of syntax and the exact names of basic things constantly. On a blank screen without syntax hints and autocompletion, or a blank whiteboard, I'm guaranteed to look like a moron if you don't let me just write pseudocode. Been paid to write code for about 25 years. This has never been any amount of a problem on the job but is sometimes a source of stress in interviews and has likely lost me an offer or two (most of the sources of stress in an interview have little to do with the job, really)

Glohrischi 6mo ago

Don't worry, i never thought I would see someone unable to write fizzbuzz, but it happened 9 years ago. Also how many people work with linux and can't tell you what 'ls -alh' is doing is staggering (lets ignore the h, even al people struggle hard). People working with docker for YEARS and don't even understand how docker actually works (cgroups)... Interviewing was always a bag of emotions in sense of "holy shit my job is save your years to come" and "srsly? how? How do you still have a job?"

amarant 6mo ago

Meh. Before AI I've had "senior" colleagues with 10 and 8 years experience each, doing pair programming for 2 days straight, and in that time they hadn't managed to checkout a new branch in git. It's not even that they got distracted, they sat there trying, for 2 whole days, with concerned colleagues giving them hints like "have you tried checkout -b"... They didn't manage! How the hell do you work for a decade in this business without learning even the most basic git commands? Or at least how to look them up? Or how to use a gui? Incompetent devs is not a new thing.

LeFantome 6mo ago
It is ok to work somewhere that does not use git. But how do you not figure out how to do the basics given 30 mins and an Internet connection?
deleted 6mo ago
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