> Programming interviews seem incredibly confrontational compared to my current profession. Interviewers seem to be out to trick you at something, or else to prove how much smarter they are than you.
Many interviewers are poor at doing interviews. :(
I do not try to trick anyone in any interview I do. I put forth a problem and ask people to work towards a solution. If I feel the solution can be improved upon (not necessarily to get the answer "I want", but in an overall sense of software engineering) I start asking exploratory questions about why some piece of code was implemented some particular way.
I have a set of questions I ask every candidate that comes through, the questions start off easy and work their way up through a progression of difficulty. None of the questions are me thinking I know how to do best, and on 2 occasions so far I have hired people for at least in part giving better answers on the questions than the solutions I knew.
As for confrontational, I try to remember that almost everyone is below optimal during interviews! I get nervous during interviews as well, I don't expect people to be at the top of their game and nail everything, silly mistakes that normally would get filtered out before fingers hit keyboard end up being put on a white board for fear of time. I get that, I do the same damn thing when being interviewed. :)
