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it makes no sense that you're being crucified. Probably because there's significant overlap in the Venn diagram of people with years experience who professiona
by warent 3y ago
it makes no sense that you're being crucified.
Probably because there's significant overlap in the Venn diagram of people with years experience who professionally develop products that generate $millions in wealth/value, and people who would fail that interview.
Or we have worked with junior developers who have really grown and flourished under our care, who would never have gotten that chance with such insane Draconian judgements.
It's such an obvious "GOTCHA!!" setting someone up for failure.
The way it's framed is very cringy because it signals that they don't care in their interviews about determining how objectively effective a software developer is.
- maleldil 3y agoI don't get it. This is an extremely basic fact that most people can figure out after thinking about primes for a minute. Maybe if you ask for "what's an easy optimisation here?" This would make the candidate think more closely about invariants that their code should hold, which in itself is a very valuable skill.
- NhanH 3y agoBecause I know enough not to write prime testing code that resemble anything like that loop to have to care about reducing its search space. If you actually want to test my knowledge about prime number, you can ask and I will tell you about using some probabilistic choice instead, and that I know fast deterministic one might exist, but I am not up to date on the state of the art. If I have to write the loop above, I am assuming it is the Fizzbuzz equivalent of your company to show that I know how to write a while loop. I am not thinking about reducing the search space because I am writing the code semi-unconscious and frankly just want to get to the next question.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoSame. Also, if I'm suspecting it's a "can they into loops" fizzbuzz test, I'd be wary of reducing the search space for the simple reason that it makes the code slightly more complex, introducing a chance to make e.g. off-by-one error, which would lose me points if the reviewer has the kind of "pedntic over irrelevant things" attitude this subthread is criticizing.