How to Pass a Programming Interview
<p><pre><code>    Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming 
    interviews.
</code></pre>
And that just says it all, doesn&#x27;t it? I agree that interviews should test candidates on certain basic skills, including (time&#x2F;space) complexity analysis. But do you really learn anything by asking the candidate if they can recite the time complexity of a moving window average algorithm (as I was asked to do by an interviewer yesterday)? What does the candidate&#x27;s ability to code a palindrome checker that can handle punctuation and spaces tell you about their ability to deliver robust, maintainable code?<p>I don&#x27;t have the answer, but I just don&#x27;t see how the questions typically asked in programming interviews give you a good picture of the candidate&#x27;s actual programming ability. I much prefer &quot;homework&quot; projects, even if they involve me working &quot;for free&quot;, because I feel like they ask for actual programming skills rather than the &quot;guess the algorithm&quot; lottery of phone screens and whiteboard coding.