Preparing for a coding interview at a startup and then you see stuff like this online smh.

I would switch to a different language that can handle this bullshit because we are living in lala land obviously.

"Why the fuck would I do that" is a fantastic reply.
Another would be: "Since we're throwing away good sense and time, here's the ridiculously elaborate way I'd do that without libraries..."

The question is not stupid, contrary to the comments.
They are obviously looking for low (hardware)-level skills, capacity to think algorithms on the fly.
If your only answer is 'I can only use a stupid highlevel black box to do everything without me understanding', you just failed the interview, sorry.

@mhudson I think only the answer is stupid. The guy want to know how he could react in an environment with some technical constraint. Answering "Why the fuck" = I don't know, I don't want to know, and also I don't take your questions seriously.

Really bad start in a company IMO

That's when you start writing it in assembly.

@Greggergalactic i dont either, the point is not to *know*. But I'd think, divide the problem, try to find some computer science concept that could help me, propose an approach, try to develop it, etc...

If your approach to a whiteboard interview question is to use a specific language, you've already lost! You didn't even solve the problem and you're trying to implement the solution. With the constraints of a language.

@-FLX @-FLX of course you should know how to solve problems at both low/high level. This was only posted to show how risible interview questions can be. :) Also I probably wouldn't pick ruby to answer my interview questions anyway lol

@-FLX actually the question is really stupid. The way to gauge someone's problem solving abilities is not to give them dumb, non-realistic, artificial constraints. Sure, I could write some dumb program that shifts bits in low level memory. Pretty sure I have done that as a college assignment. But that's basically all it is. Contrived college busy work. I am not going to ask a carpenter to build a fence without a toolbox if the position is at a build fences with toolboxes company. Similarly, I'm not going to deny a programmer access to their language's standard library at the very least.

@projektaquarius actually the questions are perfect and nicely selected .It tests for specific skills .If you are asked in an interview to balance a binary search tree do you consider it bad ?Obviously no! it's about basic understanding of computer science. It like abc of bigger picture.an I doubt anyone who is unable to answer those questions.just by importing libraries and doing some random shit is why we have most software projects broken and why we see people here ranting about maintaining shit code .Because some people just can't think outside of libraries and frameworks

Also interviews are not meant to test your * programming language* capabilities it's meant to test your *programming* capabilities.
You know why google facebook microsoft.......(Insert any big company here) ask such questions ?It's not because they want to know how well you can use your programming language but they want to know how well you can program the logic because for any good programmer picking up languages and libraries and frameworks isn't a big deal.

@anekix that is a false equivalence. Balancing a binary search tree is a basic algorithm question. But in order to do it in an understandable way, you basically need a standard library of some sort. It also isn't a stupid and contrived question with arbitrary constraints. It is a meaningful question.

@anekix also you are misunderstanding what this is saying. The question is: how do you do a thing? He gives an answer. Then he asks: "how would you do that in your language without the basic tools for your language and in some non-realistic instance?" Fuck that.

I interviewed with multiple big software companies, and they ask you to pick you language. So if he picked Ruby, his answer would make sense. I did an Amazon interview in C#. They let me use C# standard constructs. As any reasonable company should.