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I really like the idea of this site, but it needs some polish. 1. As everybody has said, more languages. 2. One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm a

I really like the idea of this site, but it needs some polish. 1. As everybody has said, more languages. 2. One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm as possible. Seeing that 90% of people can't write a C program that reverses a linked list makes me nervous about the strictness of the test. 3. Rather than giving just a subset of the environment how about you make each test have to produce a binary. Then tell candidates that the test is for `gcc -o reverse reverce.c && ./reverse 1 2 3 4` to output "4 3 2 1". I presume you are running them in a sandboxed VM? That will help people run and debug the program on their own machines.

kranner 16y ago
Thanks! - With the 'open' tests, encouraging experimentation was the intent. It definitely needs an interactive syntax check as others have suggested. - Each test does produce a binary, which runs in a sandbox (or rather a few nested sandboxing mechanisms). Your suggestion is interesting but I don't think I fully understand it. For one it might restrict us to solutions expressible as strings, and the formatting requirements might make the task stricter.
- chrislloyd 16y ago
  I guess I didn't explain myself well enough. Give candidates the entire file and tell them how it will be run. Then it's trivial for them to develop on their local machine. I'm positive most of the failures you'll get are syntax related. Let people check their own! If you want to check their syntax for them, that is going to be a lot of work and make it harder to add new languages. Include the unit tests with what you give the candidate so you are not just limited to string output if you want, but you could give just them the formatter too. Keep up the good work though, it was actually quite fun doing a couple of the tests :)
  - kranner 16y ago
    Thanks for the encouragement, it's very heartening!
lsc 16y ago
>2. One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm as possible. Seeing that 90% of people can't write a C program that reverses a linked list makes me nervous about the strictness of the test. really? that's about what I'd expect. Consider that the incompetent are over-represented amongst the job hunters, and it doesn't surprise me one bit that 90% of the candidates can't reverse a linked list in C. Also, nearly all programmers are at least a little bit arrogant about their ability. I think a hard programming test, even a actual hard programming test, would scare fewer candidates than an actual face to face interview.
edw519 16y ago
One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm as possible. Why? As a potential customer of this product, I don't care how calm the candidate is. They'll have plenty of stress to manage on the job anyway. I just care if they can code. Weed out the posers and send me the rest. We can worry about the touchy/feely stuff later. Seeing that 90% of people can't write a C program that reverses a linked list makes me nervous about the strictness of the test. That's OP's main value proposition! A few bucks instead of a few hours to weed out the posers is an excellent selling point. Best wishes, OP.
- kranner 16y ago
  Many thanks!

kranner 16y ago

Thanks! - With the 'open' tests, encouraging experimentation was the intent. It definitely needs an interactive syntax check as others have suggested. - Each test does produce a binary, which runs in a sandbox (or rather a few nested sandboxing mechanisms). Your suggestion is interesting but I don't think I fully understand it. For one it might restrict us to solutions expressible as strings, and the formatting requirements might make the task stricter.

chrislloyd 16y ago
I guess I didn't explain myself well enough. Give candidates the entire file and tell them how it will be run. Then it's trivial for them to develop on their local machine. I'm positive most of the failures you'll get are syntax related. Let people check their own! If you want to check their syntax for them, that is going to be a lot of work and make it harder to add new languages. Include the unit tests with what you give the candidate so you are not just limited to string output if you want, but you could give just them the formatter too. Keep up the good work though, it was actually quite fun doing a couple of the tests :)
- kranner 16y ago
  Thanks for the encouragement, it's very heartening!

lsc 16y ago

>2. One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm as possible. Seeing that 90% of people can't write a C program that reverses a linked list makes me nervous about the strictness of the test. really? that's about what I'd expect. Consider that the incompetent are over-represented amongst the job hunters, and it doesn't surprise me one bit that 90% of the candidates can't reverse a linked list in C. Also, nearly all programmers are at least a little bit arrogant about their ability. I think a hard programming test, even a actual hard programming test, would scare fewer candidates than an actual face to face interview.

edw519 16y ago

One of the aims is to have the candidate as calm as possible. Why? As a potential customer of this product, I don't care how calm the candidate is. They'll have plenty of stress to manage on the job anyway. I just care if they can code. Weed out the posers and send me the rest. We can worry about the touchy/feely stuff later. Seeing that 90% of people can't write a C program that reverses a linked list makes me nervous about the strictness of the test. That's OP's main value proposition! A few bucks instead of a few hours to weed out the posers is an excellent selling point. Best wishes, OP.

kranner 16y ago
Many thanks!