"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?"
-- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Act I, Scene I, Line 43
FizzBuzz as an interview kata has been getting a lot of bad press lately. Part of the bad press has been around having to use modulus in the solution. I am not sure how people have been explaining FizzBuzz in interviews, but you do not have to know anything about the mod operator in order to solve the problem.
Here is a solution in Clojure which does not use modulus.
This solution is using cycles and zip. The odds are low of someone knowing how to use cycle and zip but not knowing modulus. The point is that you do not need to know about modulus to do the kata.
In interviews I do, I'll tell the person about modulus if they get stuck. The point of using a kata in an interview is to make sure that person who claims to be a programmer can actually program and that you can work with the person.
Still if the whole modulus thing has you worried, try the Roman Numeral kata.
Here is a solution in C# I did few minutes before an interview on Thursday (pro-tip, always make sure you can do the kata in short amount of time before you ask someone else to do it in an interview).
Again, the goal of the interview kata should be to see if the person can actually program and to see what they are like to work with.
"No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir. But
I bite my thumb, sir."
