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I have to disagree with this trend of having people write code on a computer instead of a whiteboard. Sure, it mimics the real world, but in practice you spend
by jonathankoren 9y ago
I have to disagree with this trend of having people write code on a computer instead of a whiteboard. Sure, it mimics the real world, but in practice you spend a bunch of time dealing with crap about syntax errors, and argument order mismatch instead of dealing with the actual underlying algorithm. Even worse, you may end up with a candidate that realizes that there's probably a library that would be really useful for this, but then has to spend time googling for the name of the library, then installing it, and then desperately skimming for a quick start in documentation because the question isn't, "Can you work google and run pip install?", but rather some other task. So now you've probably lost 15 minutes just dealing with that shit.
If you're going to do this, it simply doesn't work in a 40 minute setup without some sort of provided scaffolding and test cases.
- jpatokal 9y agoIs doing interviews in an IDE and expecting fully functional code actually a thing? My company uses a simple text editor: perfection is not expected, and it's still way better than a whiteboard.
- jonathankoren 9y agoI can confirm that this is a thing at multiple companies. Instead of of testing the actual algorithm, you'll encounter such blasts from the past like: "Network Socket Debugging", "How The Fuck Does Java Read From STDIN?", and everyone's favorite, "Why The Fuck Did You Give Me Text Data In CSV Format?" I have seen this go well exactly once. And they provided an environment with a working (albeit do nothing) scaffold along with test data. Also it was like a three hours in a room.