I wish we took notes during interviews. On well. We still remember candidates who apply multiple times.
To get this out of the way, here's my implementation for this year:
int main() {
return 1;
}
If you had the acting skills to convincingly give off the impression that you're a novice programmer, you've also got the skills to convincingly give off a more directly useful impression.
Although, the actual interviews and results are kept secret from the rest of the company—apart from higher-ups—I got insight into them because I was asked to filter out through some final candidates by interviewing them. I realised that they kept notes from past interviews, and based on the fact that one of the interviewees progressed a lot in a 2 year period, I was inclined to put him on top of the list of my recommendation.
I feel like the ability to change is more important than just plain knowledge. More importantly, be mature and accept you "sucked" because {reasons} and work on yourself to improve, rather than be immature and "pridefully" (for a lack of better word) refuse critique.