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someone who performs poorly under the pressure of an interview may be a fantastic programmer once hired and working on an actual project

Maybe. But then again if I have one spot open for the quarter then I'm probably not going to take the chance on someone who crumbles when asked how to get the duck safely across the river or whatever.

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And if a good programmer has a choice of employers (and they do), they probably aren't going to take a chance on someone whose idea of evaluating their skills is to ask how to get a duck across a river.

If that's the only thing asked during the interview then I might agree with you. It really never is, though, is it?

Seriously, do you really want to work with someone who's too uptight to answer a couple of harmless riddles during the course of the interview process that includes a host of different methods for transferring information?

Yes, I do. Too many times I've worked with programmers that were pushovers to inane edicts from management, whereas if just a few had said, "I see what you're trying to do, can we accomplish this in a more efficient manner by ..."

How many ducks are you dealing with in a day?

I'm way too embarrassed to say.

And I'd ask the shy guy "so what's fun for you right now? Show me." before any quackery.

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