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0 points2arrs2ells14y ago0 comments

The interview question isn't supposed to test your knowledge of Pascal's Triangle - it's designed to test your ability to create it programatically.

I'm sure cletus or any other interviewer would explain what Pascal's Triangle is to you, and provide a couple rows of example output if you asked.

EDIT: Find/replace "Pascal's Triangle" with "FizzBuzz" and reread the comment. You'll get the same insight without getting hung up on seeing a term you didn't know.

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8 comments · 2 top-level

jebblue14y ago· 6 in thread

What is a FizzBuz and what does it have to do with day to day Software Engineering?

fishtoaster14y ago

What switz said.

It's useful as a very early screening because it eliminates a lot of people who are wasting your time and is so simple as to have almost to false negatives. It has no complexity, no algorithm or concepts you might be unfamiliar with- just the for loop, the conditional, and the modulo operator. No one who claims to be a professional developer should fail it.

For reference: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmer...

switz14y ago

FizzBuzz:

Write a program that prints the numbers 1 to 100. However, for multiples of 3 print "Fizz" and for multiples of 5 print "Buzz". For multiples of both 3 and 5, print "FizzBuzz".

acheron14y ago

I've gotten that one a few times, and I always write something that only contains the string 'Fizz' once and 'Buzz' once (i.e., doesn't say 'FizzBuzz' separately, just uses the same logic to print 'Fizz' and 'Buzz' both), because I figured that was partly the point; otherwise it would be "print 'Zarples' for both multiples". I've been told that it's the first time the interviewer saw it done that way, and now I see several replies here that also would take no modification to use 'Zarples' instead of 'FizzBuzz'.

No point to this, I guess, other than that even something as simplistic as this is open to interpretation.

harichinnan14y ago

Couldn't resist using my new Haskell skills.

show' :: Int -> String show' x

|((rem x 3 == 0) && (rem x 5 == 0)) = "FizzBuzz"

|rem x 3 == 0 = "Fizz"

|rem x 5 == 0 = "Buzz"

|otherwise = show x

main :: IO ()

main = putStrLn $ foldl (\acc x -> acc ++"\n" ++ show' x) "" [1..100]

2 more replies

earl14y ago

A trivial piece of code that a candidate should be able to write as quickly as they can type on a computer or write on the board designed to test that (1) they can write basic code and (2) they've written enough code that trivial problems are trivial. Jeff Atwood coined the phrase [1] and gave the classic example:

   Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples 
   of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five
   print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print
   "FizzBuzz".

[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmer...

digitailor14y ago

Can someone tell me a lispier way of doing this than

  (dotimes (n 100)
	   (cond ((= 0 n))
		 ((and (= 0 (mod n 3))(= 0 (mod n 5)))
		  (format t "~a: Fizz Buzz!~%" n))
		 ((= 0 (mod n 3))
		  (format t "~a: Fizz!~%" n))
		 ((= 0 (mod n 5))
		  (format t "~a: Buzz!~%" n))
		 (t (format t "~a~%" n))))

1 more reply

Jacquass1232114y ago

Very much this, my company has been taking a deeper look at its hiring processes lately, and I know there are explicitly comments on our small coding problems that say things like

"Candidates might get hung up on the gotcha part of it: the actual snip calculation. That's not something we care about, but that the candidates will likely think we care about. We should consider just giving them the formula (or letting them use a pre-defined "snip" method)."

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