coding challenges as part of interviews: yes or no?
jamess: Trick questions, or questions with some kind of gottcha have no place in interviews, However, simple, straightforward programming exercises are essential. I've seen people who claim to have X years of industry experience who can talk a good game, but literally can't write a switch statement without reference to the internet.I also like to ask people to peer review some code with both obvious and more subtle errors in it. That's a pretty important skill to me too. Anyway, ask them to code some fairly simple algorithm and then critique their own work. If there are several ways to solve the same problem, some more efficient than others, all the better.