FizzBuzz, explainedįizzbuzz is an exercise that then-developer Imran Ghory wrote about back in 2007. The best known of these is the dreaded FizzBuzz.

They might be good in other roles in the development process, but not in one where they have to write production code.Īs a result, there’s a category of little assignments whose sole purpose isn’t to identify great programmers, or even good ones, but to spot the ones you shouldn’t hire. These are programmers who can’t solve simple problems, the sort that you should be able to do during a lunch or coffee break. They’re not even programmers who run into trouble just working on the sort of everyday problems that you encounter maintaining established, working software.

These aren’t programmers who have difficulty taking on big problems, such as the kind you run into when working on complex problems and writing all-new code from scratch. But when they’re put to the task of actually writing working software, they just can’t do it. They’ll know all the proper terminology, be able to speak intelligently about the key concepts in this programming language or that framework or library, and may even have given a pretty good talk at a meetup or conference. This person will have an impressive-looking resume. Sooner or later, you will encounter - or worse still, end up working with - a programmer who only seems good at programming. Spotting the programmers who can’t program The “job interview” scene from Good Will Hunting.

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