So, you don't hire me! :)

Probably it's useless to say that, from my direct experience as well from the results I know in other companies, the best programmers were selected using this kind of questions and not language very specific questions (as I have seen just too many times). Obviously, such questions must be combined with language/prgramming questions. The real advantage is that the solutions to such problems cannot be learned from books, while language/programming answers can be... Another advantage is that almost anybody with a good logic can discuss such problems, while, even the smartest people may fail in front of language problems they don't know. I mean that this is an advantage when you want to test the logic... :)

The best such tests I've seen: 10-15 problems like this in 10-15 minutes. Almost nobody can know already all the problems. The response time is very important.

Vlad

>Wow it's great to spark such interest. I received some good answers. This was not one of them. However, at least you did respond!