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't it? I agree that interviews should test candidates on certain basic skills, including (time/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'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't have the answer, but I just don't see how the questions typically asked in programming interviews give you a good picture of the candidate's actual programming ability. I much prefer "homework" projects, even if they involve me working "for free", because I feel like they ask for actual programming skills rather than the "guess the algorithm" lottery of phone screens and whiteboard coding.