People really need to stop lumping fizzbuzz into their hatred of "trivia" questions. You don't do variations of fizzbuzz. Fizzbuzz is not a challenge, it is not trivia, it is not a trick question or a brain teaser. It is the simplest, most inane function you can ask someone to write. It exists purely to filter out people who simply can not write any code at all. It is a test of "does this person understand the concept of a loop, and the concept of a conditional". That is it.
I agree that Fizzbuzz isn't a trick question or a brain teaser. If I disagree with you about "trivia", I think it's because I disagree what the word "trivia" means, not because I disagree about Fizzbuzz. Whatever.
However, I do meaningfully disagree about "variations of Fizzbuzz". It does make sense to vary fizzbuzz, if you suspect that your candidate will have literally memorized the solution, character for character. If that's a concern, though, trivial variations are sufficient: replace the 5 with a 7, or change the ELSE case from "print the number" to "print nothing", or something.
I agree that if your "variation" makes it "interesting", you're not doing Fizzbuzz.
Whether or not interesting programming puzzles are a good element of interviewing, well, there continues to be a wide range of opinions on that.
>However, I do meaningfully disagree about "variations of Fizzbuzz".
What I was responding to was "variations of fizzbuzz until your brain bleeds". Which I interpret to mean doing a fizzbuzz, then the interviewer changes it a bit, and a bit more, and keeps dragging it out, having misinterpreted its purpose. Certainly the one and only "fizzbuzz" test you give a candidate can vary from individual to individual.
