I think "cookie-cutter technical interview" has been misunderstood. My fault, I didn't spend much time on it in the post.
A cookie-cutter interview will ask things that I've been asked by every other shop in town. For instance, I literally recite Fibonacci now. It's a completely useless test because it's over-used. This sort of thing makes a company look cold and - far worse - unimaginative. It's not insulting, it's just a red flag.
The other part of this is having people stand at a whiteboard or work on paper instead of sitting down with them at a computer. Every single thing you listed can be determined by sitting with the candidate at a computer, working with actual code.
None of this bars you from asking about historical quirks of compilers or anything else. If anything, it offers you the chance to have a more relaxed conversation about these things so you can get past the bullshit and see the person that you'll actually be working with.
I actually printed out about 20 sample bits of code, and discussed that. I worked with people on the Image Processing / Computational Geometry side who would set up a programming challenge with a compiler, and I respect that, too.
A cookie-cutter interview will ask things that I've been asked by every other shop in town. For instance, I literally recite Fibonacci now. It's a completely useless test because it's over-used. This sort of thing makes a company look cold and - far worse - unimaginative. It's not insulting, it's just a red flag.
The other part of this is having people stand at a whiteboard or work on paper instead of sitting down with them at a computer. Every single thing you listed can be determined by sitting with the candidate at a computer, working with actual code.
None of this bars you from asking about historical quirks of compilers or anything else. If anything, it offers you the chance to have a more relaxed conversation about these things so you can get past the bullshit and see the person that you'll actually be working with.