Did you read the whole post? In the interview, the questions were posed as starting points for discussion, not as a pass/fail trick quiz. And that completely changes how I for one react to them. I'd say there are plenty of valid reasons for finding out what a candidate thinks about code like these examples!

My reaction to an interview along these lines would be:

  1. Answer the questions.
  2. Discuss why tricky code like that is bad, how I would refactor it, when and why I might choose to document rather than refactor, and the value of coding standards in preventing such code being written in the first place.

I'd make my decision on whether it was a place I wanted to work based on how the discussion went, not the questions themselves; and I'd hope the interviewer would judge me likewise.

In reply to Re^2: Evil Interview Questions by Porculus
in thread Evil Interview Questions by kyle

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.