The “Fizz-Buzz test” is an interview question designed to identify programmers who don’t actually know how to program. The text of the programming assignment is as follows:
“Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.”
At first blush, this is a simple exercise, intended to help highlight how someone approaches a task.
But it can be seen as something deeper than that. By exposing the thought process of creating this simple script, we gain insight into how we view the world. How we organize, sort, and group. How we hear, confirm, and deliver requirements. How we interact with others. How we deal with requests by people of importance (the person who can give me a job) which is clearly beneath my skills (this is something ANY freshman computer science student should be able to do).
It turns out how we answer this simple counting exercise is as much about who we are as it is about what we are able to do.