Questions like that are like testing if somebody can touch type by asking questions like "which sequence of finger presses would you use to type qWaMvz%e3("? It

Questions like that are like testing if somebody can touch type by asking questions like "which sequence of finger presses would you use to type qWaMvz%e3("? It's not how we normally access the information. I could type that in a second, but it would be a struggle to tell you how to type that. I'd have to put my hands under the desk and simulate typing it to tell you. I'm not against talking about such things in an interview; a suprising number of people that claim expertise in a language have apparently never used it, but the interviewer has to understand what their question is actually measuring. With question like that you are often measuring if their brain can recall information in unconventional ways, or if they read an interview book in the last few days. The old standby that was popular awhile ag: "define OO" - if you haven't memorized the book definition it can be hard to rattle off. Doesn't mean you couldn't have a multi hour discussion about OO, functional, and procedural programming, and more importantly make reasonable and sophisticated design decisions based on your understanding of these things.