All the fuss about FizzBuzz

Recently I’ve read once again about the FizzBuzz. For those not familiar with this term: Fizzbuzz is a taks that could by used while interviewing a software developer for a job. It’s is essentially a trivial task of listing all the numbers from 1 to 100 but replacing multiples of 3 with Fizz, multiples of 5 with Buzz and multiples of both with FizzBuzz. A task that an intelligent person, with some background in software development, suppose to crack in 5 (10 tops) minutes. But of course there are good solution and better solutions. I’m thinking about the solutions provided after Jeff Attwod post on his blog. People are so eager to post a solution without thinking about the problem through. They are forgetting to print the number that does not match FizzBuzz pattern. Or a white board problem: you use > instead of < in a for loop. Is it bad? Actually I think it’s not. The great idea with giving such a task, while interviewing is not to get a perfect solution. It is to see how the interviewing person thinks, how doe’s she get through analyze and “implementation”. You should seek for a perfect solution, but you have to praise the better ones. And plase! PLEASE! Give the “software developer to by” a task involving software development while interviewing. Because if you will not, you could get someone without a value. Really I’ve seen enough large mouths that could lie their way all up to the skies, but were miserable software developers.
Originally published at Sunday, May 13, 2007