Then a good nano question would be if they know what a debugger is or how they use it. Or any of those very generic questions that any half decent programmer will know, but others won’t.

These questions are made to filter out the pure frauds. People who claim to have 10 years experience but have none. Those who claim to have a CS degree but it’s a fake diploma, etc. They aren’t meant to tell the good developers from the bad.

As said in the article, these questions are risky because they annoy experienced developers. But it’s also a waste of time having a person who never programmed in their life go through a deep interview about api design or architecture.