Wait, why are you mentioning FizzBuzz? It's like saying "I can walk in many ways".
You wouldn't expect a carpenter to say "I can both screw and unscrew screws from wood". It's sort of a given if you have the slightest bit of domain knowledge.
Besides, just the fact that someone knows about FizzBuzz is a good sign in my book (also the fact that they know about HN, but I digress).
Given that a huge number of professional programmers can't do the programming equivelant of screwing and unscrewing screws, that actually does make a difference.
> FizzBuzz was presented as the lowest level of comprehension required to illustrate adequacy. There's no glory to be had in writing code that establishes a minimum level of competency. Even if you can write it in five different languages or in under 50 bytes of code.
> The whole point of the original article was to think about why we have to ask people to write FizzBuzz. The mechanical part of writing and solving FizzBuzz, however cleverly, is irrelevant. Any programmer who cares enough to read programming blogs is already far beyond such a simple problem. FizzBuzz isn't meant for us. It's the ones we can't reach-- the programmers who don't read anything-- that we're forced to give the FizzBuzz test to.
I think that mentioning it as a skill (unless it's in jest), seriously hurts anyone's chances at being taken seriously. Exactly like someone would be dubious if their carpenter said "I can definitely make that cabinet for you. Hell, I can screw and unscrew!"
I don't think it came off that way at all. He's stating that he can demonstrate a basic, fundamental grasp of code structure in several languages and types of languages, which is pretty good.
As for complexity, FizzBuzz is nothing like Hello World. Hello World only shows that one knows how to make a program compile/interpret and display fixed output. FizzBuzz demonstrates the above, plus an understanding of looping, basic arithmetic operations, and how to create program flow from that. Like it or not, that covers most of the actual coding requirements of probably 90% of jobs out there. It shouldn't be a deciding factor in getting hired, but it's an excellent first step in weeding out those who shouldn't be considered.
Fun thing to say on HN... maybe not so good for a conversation with random person trying to hire you ;)