Mike Reiland: when you wrote
“Not being able to answer that particular question certainly doesn’t preclude someone from being a good programmer. That’d be like asking a C# programmer how to do modulo 16 using only a logical and. Why the hell would they need to know that, and how does that help you determine that they understand the ASP.Net framework, etc.?”
I think you missed the bloody point. There are plenty of people who “know the [fill in the blank] framework,” but can’t program worth a flying damn in a circus tent. I’ve worked with people who brought a Master’s Degree in Computer Science to the table, but couldn’t understand the concept of a state machine or even building flag values by accumulating bits. I showed a simple event-driven framework to one junior programmer and his response was “I wasn’t taught that method.” He didn’t ever appear to grasp that there was more to the world than was taught in his Computer Science classes, and that we were allowed to actualy come up with and express ideas all on our own without a professor’s approval. Needless to say, he didn’t last long. (Actually, he was a little on the weird side; he kept coming to work after we fired him. That concept of being fired seemed beyond him as well.)
Check out http://worsethanfailure.com/Default.aspx for examples of people who “know the [f.i.t.b.] framework,” but can’t seem to express the simplest of concepts in code. It has little to do with hoop-jumping and clever tricks, and everything to do with getting the job done on a daily basis: some of these people come out of University with a degree and no idea at all how to code.
The company where I work has an extensive series of programming tests for potential new hires, including specific problems derived from the kind of coding we expect them to do on a daily basis. It’s amazing how many people can’t get through it. One applicant excused himself to go to the bathroom during the middle of the test, and never came back. It’s not even a hard test.
For the record: wrote the FizzBuzz thing in under two minutes–right the first time. (In all fairness, though, I first started programming when I was 15, and that was 31 years ago. If I can’t do FizzBuzz after that amount of time, I need to hang up the cape.)