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That is a terrible interview question. First, it's likely to make candidates more nervous, rather than set them at ease. Second, it tells you very little if the

by zellyn 12y ago

That is a terrible interview question. First, it's likely to make candidates more nervous, rather than set them at ease. Second, it tells you very little if they can't solve it, or if they solve it immediately. My rule is that you should stay away from aha! type questions that really only tell you one bit of information. Designing a program to solve this kind of problem might be more of an interesting conversation…

ksk 12y ago
How do you figure this to be an aha question? To me, It's a simple problem based on elimination of obviously incorrect answers. There is no "hidden information"/trick/leap of thought/insight that is required to solve it.
cousin_it 12y ago
Logic questions are about as far from aha! as you can get. Next you'll be telling me that FizzBuzz is an aha! question. Sure, for some people it is, because they don't have a clue. Others are able to solve it systematically, and these are the candidates you're looking for. The same holds for the logic puzzle in the OP. You can solve it step by step, without any leaps. The main difficulty is getting over the initial intellectual "flinch", and making yourself actually engage with the problem. IMO that's an important skill for developers to have.
- czinck 12y ago
  I agree, although I probably wouldn't ask this in an interview just because of the risk of them seeing it before. At least when I was solving it it felt very much like debugging; you have a few snapshots of the variables and you have to reconstruct the whole logic flow.
o_nate 12y ago
I'm not sure that a good rule of interviewing is that you should only ask questions that put the candidate at ease. It's a job interview, not some soft-ball celebrity talk show interview. I don't think it's a bad idea to include a few tough questions. I agree it doesn't tell you as much if they solve it immediately. I think it might tell you something if they can't even get started on it.

by zellyn 12y ago

ksk 12y ago

How do you figure this to be an aha question? To me, It's a simple problem based on elimination of obviously incorrect answers. There is no "hidden information"/trick/leap of thought/insight that is required to solve it.

cousin_it 12y ago

Logic questions are about as far from aha! as you can get. Next you'll be telling me that FizzBuzz is an aha! question. Sure, for some people it is, because they don't have a clue. Others are able to solve it systematically, and these are the candidates you're looking for. The same holds for the logic puzzle in the OP. You can solve it step by step, without any leaps. The main difficulty is getting over the initial intellectual "flinch", and making yourself actually engage with the problem. IMO that's an important skill for developers to have.

czinck 12y ago
I agree, although I probably wouldn't ask this in an interview just because of the risk of them seeing it before. At least when I was solving it it felt very much like debugging; you have a few snapshots of the variables and you have to reconstruct the whole logic flow.

o_nate 12y ago

I'm not sure that a good rule of interviewing is that you should only ask questions that put the candidate at ease. It's a job interview, not some soft-ball celebrity talk show interview. I don't think it's a bad idea to include a few tough questions. I agree it doesn't tell you as much if they solve it immediately. I think it might tell you something if they can't even get started on it.