5 ms·

I believe this why "coding interviews" are so controversial. Different people perhaps have a different definition of "programmer". One person may think a "prog

I believe this why "coding interviews" are so controversial. Different people perhaps have a different definition of "programmer". One person may think a "programmer" should know how to design/implement algorithms, while another would say algorithms are a library implementation issue.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
navd 8y ago
I agree that may be part of it. I think coding interviews are fine as long as they aren't insane like what you see a lot these days. We just need a good metric on how to know if the person I'm interviewing can solve general problems, my problems, and has the appetite to grow more. That's really hard.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  I still find a big part of coding interviews to be just looking at the quality of someone's code. The problem I've used for years as a take home coding test is not intended to be a test of ability to implement any particularly complex algorithms or to solve unfamiliar problems on the spot but more to see how people write code in the small. Many candidates still don't make a great showing on the basics unfortunately.
flukus 8y ago
> One person may think a "programmer" should know how to design/implement algorithms, while another would say algorithms are a library implementation issue. The problem is many of us fill both definitions. One minute I could be creating a complex algorithm, the next I could copy/pasting a shell script from stack overflow and neither is necessarily a superset of the other, so which category would I put myself in?
collyw 8y ago
When the only time you have needed to implement a sort algorithm in 15 years is for an interview, then it shouldn't be so controversial an opinion to say its a stupid way to interview. If the job involves writing that sort of algorithm by all means test for it, but the majority of jobs aren't.

5 ms·

I believe this why "coding interviews" are so controversial. Different people perhaps have a different definition of "programmer". One person may think a "prog

by jenscow 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
navd 8y ago
I agree that may be part of it. I think coding interviews are fine as long as they aren't insane like what you see a lot these days. We just need a good metric on how to know if the person I'm interviewing can solve general problems, my problems, and has the appetite to grow more. That's really hard.
- mattnewport 8y ago
  I still find a big part of coding interviews to be just looking at the quality of someone's code. The problem I've used for years as a take home coding test is not intended to be a test of ability to implement any particularly complex algorithms or to solve unfamiliar problems on the spot but more to see how people write code in the small. Many candidates still don't make a great showing on the basics unfortunately.
flukus 8y ago
> One person may think a "programmer" should know how to design/implement algorithms, while another would say algorithms are a library implementation issue. The problem is many of us fill both definitions. One minute I could be creating a complex algorithm, the next I could copy/pasting a shell script from stack overflow and neither is necessarily a superset of the other, so which category would I put myself in?
collyw 8y ago
When the only time you have needed to implement a sort algorithm in 15 years is for an interview, then it shouldn't be so controversial an opinion to say its a stupid way to interview. If the job involves writing that sort of algorithm by all means test for it, but the majority of jobs aren't.