I sort of remember they asked me how to authenticate users when they interviewed me (of course the answer is to store and compare the hashes on the password).

I sort of remember they asked me how to authenticate users when they interviewed me (of course the answer is to store and compare the hashes on the password). Besides the security implications: isn't it faster to compare hashes rather than having to compare strings? (the hash computation can be done in the browser) It is also easier to store a hash field rather than passwords (hashes are fixed size whereas password strings are variable size); so why would they be doing something like this?