[Tutor] Am I missing something obvious about "FizzBuzz"?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 12:04:13PM +0100, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote:

> The fizzbuzz one is definitely a bit too simplistic, but the one
> cited by McConnel (reverse a linked list in C) is typical of
> the kind of question we used. And yes, most candidates failed.
> 
> Some of that is interview nerves so we would give them some
> hints and see if they could find the errors themselves. But
> some people literally couldn't even start!

I should think not! It's been about 30 years since I've last needed to 
reverse a linked list (in Pascal, not C, but the principle is the same). 
Who does that these days?

I would have *no idea* how to traverse a singly-linked list in reverse 
without making a copy of it first.

Okay, if you're specifically looking for somebody to write low-level 
algorithmic code, that's one thing. But 95% of programmers spend 95% of 
their time using library calls. And the remaining time, they certainly 
don't have to come up with a "reverse this linked list" algorithm from 
scratch. Google it, or look it up in a book.



-- 
Steve