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I would be happy if more than 1/10 interview candidates managed to pass my most basic programming questions. I consider my standards to be too low for the type of jobs I interview people for and I'm still disappointed routinely.

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How basic are those questions if you don't mind me asking for details?

I've resorted to starting with "find the greatest int in an array of ints". And yes, I'm routinely disappointed.

Easy -- quicksort! :-)

I'm curious why you'd choose an algorithm that on average takes O(n log n) comparisons with a O(n^2) worst case versus simply iterating O(n)?

Unless there are other requirements I don't see why you'd suggest sorting the elements.

I certainly wouldn't choose that algorithm. I thought the correct solution was obvious enough that I could joke about it...

Actually, if their solution is bit luke-warm, I often follow up with 'now find the second greatest int'. Those that don't consider sorting the array go in the big pile. :)

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