I don't know Bubble Sort. .. Does that make me a bad programmer? According to your test, I am.

Nope -- you never saw my carefully defined paragraph describing the bubble sort. I won't try to replicate it here, but I can assure you would have been able to read and understand it.

Perhaps your candidate was not being a smartass. Maybe he was like me, doesn't know any sorting algorithms by name, but he does know enough to write a program that works. So maybe he was just trying to make the best of a poor situation, trying to write any sorting function that works. And he succeeded.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

And you threw away a likely very fine candidate, just because he doesn't think like you. Instead, you think you have him all figured out. Shame on you.

I had to make a decision based on the limited amount of information I had, and in a limited amount of time. I was constrained by a number of other items -- the pay wasn't that great, yet I was trying to fill a position that required decent C and Pascal, knowledge of data communications, as well as the ability to perform second line customer support and occasionally carry a pager. It was hard to find candidates that met all of those criteria.

Nope -- you never saw my carefully defined paragraph describing the bubble sort.

Aha... So you described the Bubble Sort in words, and asked to convert it to code...? That is something else... At least, "I'm not sure which sorting algorithm is Bubble Sort" is no longer a good excuse.