Interesting variations of FizzBuzz? [closed]

Question

In hiring programmers, a common test is the Fizz Buzz test. What are some neat/interesting variations on fizz buzz which keep with about the same difficulty level?

Basically, if I asked someone to do a fizz buzz test over email or something, I'd want to make sure they can't just google the code.

Answer 1

As others have said, I don't think FizzBuzz is appropriate over email, but might be appropriate at some other place (say, at a job fair where you need a way to rapidly discard resumes that are a waste of both the interviewer's and applicant's time to pursue). It's really only appropriate for sorting candidates into two buckets: programmers and not.

So with that out of the way, assuming you're targeting an appropriate environment, here are a few other quick ones:

1. Write a function that takes in a two-dimensional array of ints (or a List<? extends List<? extends Number>> or equivalent) and finds the smallest number in each row, and returns the sum of those per-row smallest values. (Or returns the minimum value overall, or the row index which contains the largest minimum, etc.)

2. Print out a portion of Pascal's triangle: specifically, ask them to write a function that takes an integer (a) and prints out the first a rows of Pascal's Triangle.

3. Write a function that prints out a breakdown of an integer into a sum of numbers that have just one non-zero digit. For example, given 43018 it should print 40000 + 3000 + 10 + 8.

4. Related to that, write a function that will accept an integer number of cents and print out a breakdown into pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, (whatever else you want - half dollars, dollar coins), using the fewest number of coins.

5. Anything from the "Coding" section of this: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen-questions

Answer 2

FizzBuzz is not meant as a test of ability, it's meant as a way to weed out the incompetent.

It should take all of 5 minutes. In person (or via a shared document). And if the candidate can't solve it as fast as he or she can write, then there should be some red flags going up.

Giving FizzBuzz or any similar problem as an email problem does two things: (1) it doesn't weed out the incompetent, and (2) it throws up red flags to any competent candidate that your company isn't very good at interviewing.

Answer 3

If you change the words "fizz" and "buzz", it quickly becomes ungoogleable. If they've studied common interview questions they might still recognize it, but at least it indicates a level of preparedness that puts them above average.

Answer 4

How about asking them to solve fizzbuzz with recursion? or with no integer division.

Answer 5

When it comes down to it, FizzBuzz leverages the most basic of programming concepts, including (as Bob Martin tends to put it) Sequence, Selection and Iteration. What you can do is provide a new question, similar to FizzBuzz, but leverage more advanced language concepts for pattern matching. For example, instead of using numbers, perhaps instead you are dealing with a collection of entities, which are polymorphically related. This would allow you to check the candidates knowledge of polymorphism, interfaces, inheritance, etc. For your selection, instead of modulus like traditional FizzBuzz, you could be looking for type matching on the elements.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant by requesting ideas with the same difficulty, but I tried to envision how I might ask this question in an interview.

Answer 6

One example of a programming 'test' I was given recently was I had to write a method which would multiply 2 integers, without using the '*' character. It is very simple, but the question was not about gauging my competency, it was about being able to review the code I wrote, point out any possible issues with it, areas in which improvements could be made.

Answer 7

If they claim to know C++ (and don't) you can always tell them to write FizzBuzz with templates.

While potentially fun, I wouldn't consider this in very good taste. If they claim to be an expert in C++ and aren't, I consider this fair game.

Answer 8

How about making it specific to your stack to show that the person has at least fiz-buzz type ability with your framework/platform. If it was a Winforms developer position for example:

You have a Window called MyWindow that has various controls on it. Write a method that will make all of the textbox backgrounds red. Make all of the label backgrounds blue. If a textbox or a label currently says "fizzbuzz", then set its background to purple.

This should be trivially easy for any Winforms developer to do with pen and paper. It demonstrates a bit of knowledge of Collections, .Net Control heirarchies, iteration, conditionals, and inheritence.