[blackhole]

Furthermore, being awesome at "your field of choice" isn't everything. It's very much worth it to have breadth in education as well as depth: just because it doesn't directly apply to your chosen career doesn't make it a waste of time.

Please keep in mind this only applies to normal people.

[Wolfy]

Ouch, my own programming skills aren't brilliant, but i did that Fizz Buzz thing. Took 8 minutes. (3 or 4 of those where trying to fix an error), and the code is so ugly, i refuse to show it .

However, I might not be PEREFCT, but i seem to be a bit better than many applicants, if the quotes from the OP are to be beleived. <--- and thats just scary

[Flipside]

I do find it interesting that one of industries biggest complaints about applicants is their habit of pumping out programs without proper documentation and design notes one minute, and are then complaining that coders aren't pulling programs out of their arses the next...

Not that the code would be hard to write, but that does strike me as a bit of a double standard...

[Iss Mneur]

I do find it interesting that one of industries biggest complaints about applicants is their habit of pumping out programs without proper documentation and design notes one minute, and are then complaining that coders aren't pulling programs out of their arses the next...

Not that the code would be hard to write, but that does strike me as a bit of a double standard...

I don't see it as a double standard. The test is not a test of programming practice, but of programming competence.  That is, this test, if passed would be followed by one that asks the applicant to write and document a data structure (like a linked list), and this would be marked on the quality of the algorithms and the accuracy of the documentation.  The ones that fail the FizzBuzz test are *not* even able to write any code at all. Even when given the algorithm!

FizzBuzz is akin to asking someone that is applying to be a Editor (for a paper or magazine) and asking them to read a question (Describe the room you are in but do not mention anything about the colours) and write their response. And in order to pass they just have to write in mediocre English and not mention any colours.  By mediocre English I mean something that is mostly coherent and recognizable as English. Spelling, proper grammar, and full sentences are not required. That is, something like the machine translators produce would be more than adequate.

[Flipside]

True, I suppose it's a valid test so long as it's taken into account that it is 'exam conditions', which is far from a coder at their best Y'See the way I'd approach it is with booleans, fizz = (number MOD 3 = 0) buzz = (number MOD 5 = 0), that way if !fizz and !buzz, then you can get straight out of the text checking loop and just throw out the number, and, to me, it makes the code a lot easier to read, I'll agree that ought to be easy for anyone to throw out in 10 minutes, even in those kinds of conditions.