3 ms·

Everyone experiences stress on an interview, and thus may not be able to solve "do you know it" problems that he would have been perfectly solved after a bette

Everyone experiences stress on an interview, and thus may not be able to solve "do you know it" problems that he would have been perfectly solved after a better night's sleep. That is not the problem (we call them "happy idea" problems around here). I really dislike being asked this type of problems and I also dislike asking them for these reasons. Despite the fact the positions I've interviewed for you end implementing "pure data structures" much more than you end up implementing business rules (we build software for engineering: simulation, optimization, etc.). So imagine how low I set the bar between my colleagues. The problem is when you apparently _forget_ the syntax for a function declaration in a programming language you claim N years of experience in your CURRENT position. This is just absurd. Our you suddenly get completely stuck with counting odd numbers on a sequence or the like. And this happens surprisingly frequently. I just cannot believe you can have this type of anxiety (I am extremely shy myself) outside your first or maybe second interview.

nitrogen 6y ago
I think my daily driver language (Ruby) has become so ingrained in my mind that it's written out of muscle memory in Vim, and translating that direct connection from thought to Vim into a whiteboard might actually be challenging. You almost never write for loops in idiomatic Ruby anyway, you use an iterator chain. Languages like C that have a single official for loop syntax are a bit easier to remember, in part because it's a syntax I have previously used on a whiteboard rather than exclusively in actual code. So if a candidate can't write a loop on a whiteboard, maybe let them try in a non-IDE text editor, or have them glance at a formal grammar for the language as a refresher that won't give away the game to someone who can't actually code.
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  Even if your IDE would type your entire programs for you, you would still know the syntax of the language just because I am 100% sure you have actually read more code than you ever wrote. And do note that even in C there is not a single official loop syntax -- a while (get_next())-like thing is a perfectly valid loop in C. All of them valid answers -- I used the word "sequence" and not "C array" for a reason. And if I start showing them an EBNF grammar for the language, now that's TWO languages that you will show you don't remember rather than one. I find this even more absurd; you don't remember anything of the syntax of the language you used at work for years, but you think you can rediscover it from the FORMAL language specification in a whiteboard?

nitrogen 6y ago

I think my daily driver language (Ruby) has become so ingrained in my mind that it's written out of muscle memory in Vim, and translating that direct connection from thought to Vim into a whiteboard might actually be challenging. You almost never write for loops in idiomatic Ruby anyway, you use an iterator chain. Languages like C that have a single official for loop syntax are a bit easier to remember, in part because it's a syntax I have previously used on a whiteboard rather than exclusively in actual code. So if a candidate can't write a loop on a whiteboard, maybe let them try in a non-IDE text editor, or have them glance at a formal grammar for the language as a refresher that won't give away the game to someone who can't actually code.

AshamedCaptain 6y ago
Even if your IDE would type your entire programs for you, you would still know the syntax of the language just because I am 100% sure you have actually read more code than you ever wrote. And do note that even in C there is not a single official loop syntax -- a while (get_next())-like thing is a perfectly valid loop in C. All of them valid answers -- I used the word "sequence" and not "C array" for a reason. And if I start showing them an EBNF grammar for the language, now that's TWO languages that you will show you don't remember rather than one. I find this even more absurd; you don't remember anything of the syntax of the language you used at work for years, but you think you can rediscover it from the FORMAL language specification in a whiteboard?