> If a company really wants to test someone's programming ability in an interview, I feel like the best thing to do would be to make up a programming language, give them a reference sheet, and then ask them to program a couple different versions of fizz-bizz.
Are you joking? Doing fizz-buzz is way too low of a bar. That doesn't even show you can use standard classes and things, like maps and lists.
> but I think you'd at least be testing the skills people actually use when programming
That would tests very few of them, unfortunately.
> rather than whether they can remember every bit of syntax from every language they have listed on their resume
No one I see tests for syntax, but for the more important/broader concepts.
> if I lied and said I knew javascript, I'd almost certainly fail a programming test that used a made-up language based on it.
Probably not. Most mainstream languages have pretty similar syntax. And if you expected people to know others without warning, people would raise hell. Anyone who knows C can probably guess the gist of what a small snippet of non-tricky Javascript does.
Well, other than R, I've never programmed in a functional language before. I programmed Javascript in my High School intro to CS class back in 2004, but I can't imagine I could pass a test based on that alone.
Fizz Bizz is stupidly easy, but I honestly don't think that much of programming is hard in the first place. The hardest thing in my mind is designing a coherent program. You could add any requirements you'd like to your made-up language (no automatic garbage collect or reference counter, etc), but I think you'd be able to tell pretty easily if they were the real deal.
Are you joking? Doing fizz-buzz is way too low of a bar. That doesn't even show you can use standard classes and things, like maps and lists.
> but I think you'd at least be testing the skills people actually use when programming
That would tests very few of them, unfortunately.
> rather than whether they can remember every bit of syntax from every language they have listed on their resume
No one I see tests for syntax, but for the more important/broader concepts.
> if I lied and said I knew javascript, I'd almost certainly fail a programming test that used a made-up language based on it.
Probably not. Most mainstream languages have pretty similar syntax. And if you expected people to know others without warning, people would raise hell. Anyone who knows C can probably guess the gist of what a small snippet of non-tricky Javascript does.