Testing Programming Skills

[Commanderbob]

I need to come up with a problem that tests a person ability to think like a programming. The problem should have multiple solutions, some more obvious but others more efficient/better in some way. I would like the problem to require that the person writes some pseudo code to explain how they would do something.

This problem is to help find a new programmer for our FIRST robotics team and I figured this form was a good place to ask.

Any ideas on a challenge that would be good to weed out the logical thinkers? Any problems that you've faced while building robots that you found to be difficult?

Thanks,
Justin

[futurrobotech]

hmmm... I've never really programmed robots so im not sure about actual making it apply but i know when i was learning c++ i would search c++ programming challenges on google and it came up with a lot of great stuff

[rbtying]

Ask them to write a quine (a program that prints its source when it runs), or a navigation function.  Judge by looking at efficiency of code.  Also try a timed algorithmic challenge (sorting?)