Too many hex calculators around

Just recently we have been interviewing for a new developer.

I have found it incredulous, the amount of people with considerable experience that cannot do hex / dec conversions. One of the things we do during an interview is to have people write code – this is normally a short 10 minute test where we give them an app with one function that converts a hex string to decimal, we ask them to refactor the function so that it no longer using the API call to do the conversion (they have to do it themselves in code).

We go to great lengths to make sure we have explained the task correctly, sometimes we prompt them earlier in the interview with a questions about converting – ‘What is 16 represented in Hex, what is 30 hex in decimal etc). We even provide a working application and allow them to play with it for a few minutes to familiarize themselves with it’s intent and operation.

The task is designed to show us the coding style of the candidate, but we’ve found that instead of looking at their code we’re looking at blank pages – there seems to be a glut of people (at least, that I am interviewing) that don’t even know how to start. We’ve had people simply stare at us blankly, people just sit and twiddle a pencil, people get flustered and simply say ‘I cannot do it, sorry’

Are we just getting below average or unsuitable candidates or have people forgotten this skill (working in number systems other than base 10). Have today’s development tools abstracted all this low level stuff away so much that people just don’t need it anymore (and therefore have teaching institutes stopped covering it) ??

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