3 ms·

I've never been giving given a practical programming test. Nearly all are useless algorithms. Create a function that takes a integer greater than 0. Build an ar

I've never been giving given a practical programming test. Nearly all are useless algorithms. Create a function that takes a integer greater than 0. Build an array equal in size to the argument. Fill the array with numbers that when summed together equal zero. It was worded far worse than that. What exactly is that telling you about the engineer? On the flip side I'm asked to code full fledged applications but not to spend too much time on them... okay... Another time I was asked to code a luhn algorithm. Oh and do it while a room of people watches you on giant screen cause that's what your day to day job will look like... I failed miserably and still got the job. What?!?!?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kyralis 8y ago
FWIW, I regularly pass interview candidates who "fail" at certain questions. The point of those questions isn't to complete it perfectly (and sometimes we get less information from those, honestly), it's to see how you go about getting there, how you fail, and how you deal with that failure. For instance, one of the problems I frequently ask has a structure that really encourages people to try inventing heuristics to solve the problem, even though ultimately all of those heuristics fail. Seeing how people react to "but what if your input looks like this?" questions is often very enlightening- can they rethink their approach? Do they just keep glomming on more special cases? Can they deal with someone pointing out that sort of flaw?