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I do like the idea of compiler driven tests over Q&A, but you still fall in the same trap of only getting answers for a very contrived case. There are more dyna

by kls 16y ago

I do like the idea of compiler driven tests over Q&A, but you still fall in the same trap of only getting answers for a very contrived case. There are more dynamics to a good developer than just a few hypothetical situations. For example someone could be great at Hibernate but not really have some a lot of work with pure JPA. Just because they are not familiar with the JPA does not mean that they have not mastered ORM concepts and would be able to do JPA development as good as the rest of us in a week or so. Which brings me to my next point. I would throw time completely out. With the situation I just framed a senior level developer is going to do what all of us do. Fire up the browser look at the JPA api and implement it. This is what makes a good developer. Someone who can gather code together and create a solution. On almost any given project there are going to be new API's that developers will have to familiarize themselves with. The ones that can are far more valuable developers, because they disseminate that information back to the rest of the team. Your test does not account for that and by making it time based you are disadvantaging the very ones that posses that valuable skill. If the answer is right, it's right. As well you should consider offering the service to recruiter and hiring line managers, not as a competitive test, but rather as a filtering tool. Competitions are regarded in academia, but in the corporate world people just want to know if you can do the job.

nps 16y ago
What you say is quite true and resonates with my personal experiences. I myself do not possess an encyclopedic knowledge, nor will you see my fingers flying over the keyboard. On the other hand, what I have noticed is that my understanding of the basics of coding, i.e. how to mix and match loops, arrays, conditionals, etc has vastly improved over time. I frequently forget advanced or language specific topics - and I don't really care, since I can easily re-read about them online and refresh myself. I have worked as an examiner for computer science university students and also as an interviewer for new hires for companies. What I have noticed is that the best candidates are similar - they have a rock solid grasp of the fundamentals of the language, and just twist and turn that knowledge to acquire the results they need. You yourself have mentioned this - a good developer with an understanding of ORM can easily adapt to whichever framework he is required to use. This mastery of the basics is what we are trying to assess with TechTestNow. You might notice that none of the questions require in-depth knowledge of the APIs (although that knowledge might help you solve some of them faster, there is always a solution that uses only basic constructs). The main reason the tests are timed is because, all said and done, a good programmer does need to have a certain coding speed ! Also, in real life, a lot of time is spent not on figuring out how to solve a problem, but rather on figuring out what the problem is in the first place - what do we really need to do ? (and can it be done at all ?). Although the problems given in TechTestNow might seem contrived, they do have the advantage of being unambiguous, so that the programmer can just concentrate on writing a solution.

by kls 16y ago

nps 16y ago

What you say is quite true and resonates with my personal experiences. I myself do not possess an encyclopedic knowledge, nor will you see my fingers flying over the keyboard. On the other hand, what I have noticed is that my understanding of the basics of coding, i.e. how to mix and match loops, arrays, conditionals, etc has vastly improved over time. I frequently forget advanced or language specific topics - and I don't really care, since I can easily re-read about them online and refresh myself. I have worked as an examiner for computer science university students and also as an interviewer for new hires for companies. What I have noticed is that the best candidates are similar - they have a rock solid grasp of the fundamentals of the language, and just twist and turn that knowledge to acquire the results they need. You yourself have mentioned this - a good developer with an understanding of ORM can easily adapt to whichever framework he is required to use. This mastery of the basics is what we are trying to assess with TechTestNow. You might notice that none of the questions require in-depth knowledge of the APIs (although that knowledge might help you solve some of them faster, there is always a solution that uses only basic constructs). The main reason the tests are timed is because, all said and done, a good programmer does need to have a certain coding speed ! Also, in real life, a lot of time is spent not on figuring out how to solve a problem, but rather on figuring out what the problem is in the first place - what do we really need to do ? (and can it be done at all ?). Although the problems given in TechTestNow might seem contrived, they do have the advantage of being unambiguous, so that the programmer can just concentrate on writing a solution.