4 ms·
Whiteboards can be invaluable tools and are a great way to explain problems. Writing large amounts of code that might require a great deal of revision is better
by bascule 15y ago
Whiteboards can be invaluable tools and are a great way to explain problems. Writing large amounts of code that might require a great deal of revision is better served by a computer.
My best experiences in job interviews on a whiteboard have been ones where the interviewer is also on the whiteboard, writing just as much as me if not more. My worst experiences have been where the interviewer was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room from me.
- marshray 15y agoMy favorite job interview question was this one. The conference room had a projector on the whiteboard with this: char *c[]= {"ENTER", "NEW", "POINT", "FIRST", }; char **cp[]= {c + 3, c + 2, c + 1, c}; char ***cpp= cp; main() { printf("%s", **++cpp); printf("%s ", *--*++cpp + 3); printf("%s", *cpp[-2] + 3); printf("%s\n", cpp[-1][-1] + 1); } I just happened to be recently studying all the operator precedence rules and other subtleties in that code, so I got it all right. (Probably wouldn't do as well today :-) But mainly it was there as a point of discussion to see how you approached such code. And like most conference room whiteboards, most of the pens were dried out. I tossed those into the trashcan.
- georgemcbay 15y ago"But mainly it was there as a point of discussion to see how you approached such code." One would hope that the expected answer was to approach it by way of promptly deleting it, replacing it with something readable, and then finding the person who wrote it and kicking them in the shin at least 8 times.
- marshray 15y agoHow are you going to know how to replace it unless you can figure out what it does?