They weren't testing minutia, they were testing depth of understanding and experience. I thought they did a decent job, too.

I would have preferred to be able to get a result without actually applying for the job though...

Having never programmed a line of C++ in my life, I started to guess at the first question. After 30 seconds or so, I thought: "These programs are short enough to just type in, compile and run. Screw using my 'experience' to answer these." I guess once I work through these they'll know that I can compile and run a program in C++, and perhaps that's all they're trying to learn here.