3 ms·

Given last.fms database of (user, (artist, track), datetime) plays, how would you quickly recommend me something to listen to? Now you have two problems. First,

Given last.fms database of (user, (artist, track), datetime) plays, how would you quickly recommend me something to listen to? Now you have two problems. First, your code, in order to run, needs to load in and process this list, and you need to decide if it's a flat text file (the format of which you then need to define and parse) or if it is in a database (the connection to and schema of you will then have to deal with). That's boilerplate that's (a) easy to get around on the whiteboard (b) utterly irrelevant to the question asked. Second, you don't actually have such a list, so running your code isn't actually impressive. Mocking up a sample list takes time, and engineering it to create useful results even more. Next, I ask you to parallelise it, and you don't recall the pragma that OpenMP uses, so you just need to pull up the manpage, or you don't have the Actors library installed, so, uh, what's the password for wireless? Oh, and you still don't have that large file, so even if you get your parallel code running before I run out of patience, waiting for the answer "well, access to this counter would have to be synchronised, so that would create a bottleneck", running your program will still not have enough data to munch on to gain any insight in it's performance. tl;dr: You will have to be very sure of yourself to pull this off. I want to know how you think, not how you handle your tools.

jerf 16y ago
Yes, much better to just handwave; that'll show you have it all together. You're seriously arguing against having somebody actually code in their interview? I'm not saying it has to be the entire interview, but how incredibly crazy is it to actively argue against the idea that maybe you, as the interviewee, might want to actually show you can do what you say you can do? Besides, I find myself questioning if you've been on the interviewer side of very many interviews. Finding people who can slurp a file in at all is a damn good start, unfortunately. Then again, I know I do this really whacky thing where my interview isn't set in stone, but I actually react to the skills demonstrated on the other end of the table. Believe me, if somebody walks in sporting a laptop I'll customize something up for them to show me out of my base set of questions. It would hardly be any different than what I do anyhow.
- mseebach 16y ago
  Lay off the strawman, whiteboard programming is not handwaving. And I can do without the ad hominem as well. No, I haven't done a lot of interviews (about 6-7 I think), but my post still has a substance that can be argued against. > You're seriously arguing against having somebody actually code in their interview? No, I have no problem with coding in an interview (I think it should be part of it, just not the part where you do something else). I have a problem with generalizing the advice "When asked to do whiteboard programming, whip out your laptop.".

jerf 16y ago

Yes, much better to just handwave; that'll show you have it all together. You're seriously arguing against having somebody actually code in their interview? I'm not saying it has to be the entire interview, but how incredibly crazy is it to actively argue against the idea that maybe you, as the interviewee, might want to actually show you can do what you say you can do? Besides, I find myself questioning if you've been on the interviewer side of very many interviews. Finding people who can slurp a file in at all is a damn good start, unfortunately. Then again, I know I do this really whacky thing where my interview isn't set in stone, but I actually react to the skills demonstrated on the other end of the table. Believe me, if somebody walks in sporting a laptop I'll customize something up for them to show me out of my base set of questions. It would hardly be any different than what I do anyhow.

mseebach 16y ago
Lay off the strawman, whiteboard programming is not handwaving. And I can do without the ad hominem as well. No, I haven't done a lot of interviews (about 6-7 I think), but my post still has a substance that can be argued against. > You're seriously arguing against having somebody actually code in their interview? No, I have no problem with coding in an interview (I think it should be part of it, just not the part where you do something else). I have a problem with generalizing the advice "When asked to do whiteboard programming, whip out your laptop.".