3 ms·

The "point" of the whiteboard interview is to see how you think and converse and interact around your coding process, not (necessarily) how accurate/good you ar

The "point" of the whiteboard interview is to see how you think and converse and interact around your coding process, not (necessarily) how accurate/good you are at writing the code. You could write pseudocode that can't compile, and as long as you can explain the algorithm and talk about its complexity you could "pass" (in theory) Screening interviews do take place in a shared doc or other editor, I believe.

Paul-Craft 3y ago
I'm sorry, I don't see how that relates to what I was asking. To be clear, I agree, I just don't understand why you chose to write this in reply to what I wrote.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  The complaint of the interviewers would (likely) be that they want to see the candidate go through the whiteboard process, because of the reasons I gave. It's just part of the process. Writing in an editor takes away their ability to probe that process. Don't get me wrong I think it's silly, but
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    Oh, I see. There's no literal reason why that discussion can't take place over a laptop screen, either. So, I suppose it more or less does boil down to "you are making us do our job differently from how we are used to, and we don't like it." That is supremely silly.
OnionBlender 3y ago
I've never had any company let me write pseudocode. I once tried to write "vec" instead of "std::vector" and the interview told me to write valid code on the whiteboard. (And I did explain that I was to avoid writing "std::vector" repeatedly).
- mrcode007 3y ago
  template<typename T> using vec = std::vector<T>; Or even using V = std::vector<T>; for a concrete type T Solves the problem. If someone denies you this, you don’t want to work there :)
- vundercind 3y ago
  I’ve managed to mostly avoid these kinds of interviews—is this for real? Is this what lots of the folks mean when they claim tons of candidates “can’t even code?” Syntax or some names aren’t right for some particular language? Shit, I forget the syntax for “for” loops or what the right way to get an array’s length is or what this language’s way of declaring a constructor looks like in languages I’ve written several hundred of lines of in the last few days, routinely, while under no real pressure at all. I crib off my own surrounding code for syntax hints constantly. I’ve been doing this north of 20 years, and tend to end up as the guy to go to for tricky problems wherever I work, but I would fail 100% of whiteboard code-writing tests that gave any fucks about it being remotely correct in any particular language. I think the last time I could maybe have done it was when I knew only one language, and it was Perl, and I mostly wrote it in notepad—so, like, the first year or so after started writing code.

Paul-Craft 3y ago

I'm sorry, I don't see how that relates to what I was asking. To be clear, I agree, I just don't understand why you chose to write this in reply to what I wrote.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The complaint of the interviewers would (likely) be that they want to see the candidate go through the whiteboard process, because of the reasons I gave. It's just part of the process. Writing in an editor takes away their ability to probe that process. Don't get me wrong I think it's silly, but
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Oh, I see. There's no literal reason why that discussion can't take place over a laptop screen, either. So, I suppose it more or less does boil down to "you are making us do our job differently from how we are used to, and we don't like it." That is supremely silly.

OnionBlender 3y ago

I've never had any company let me write pseudocode. I once tried to write "vec" instead of "std::vector" and the interview told me to write valid code on the whiteboard. (And I did explain that I was to avoid writing "std::vector" repeatedly).

mrcode007 3y ago
template<typename T> using vec = std::vector<T>; Or even using V = std::vector<T>; for a concrete type T Solves the problem. If someone denies you this, you don’t want to work there :)
vundercind 3y ago
I’ve managed to mostly avoid these kinds of interviews—is this for real? Is this what lots of the folks mean when they claim tons of candidates “can’t even code?” Syntax or some names aren’t right for some particular language? Shit, I forget the syntax for “for” loops or what the right way to get an array’s length is or what this language’s way of declaring a constructor looks like in languages I’ve written several hundred of lines of in the last few days, routinely, while under no real pressure at all. I crib off my own surrounding code for syntax hints constantly. I’ve been doing this north of 20 years, and tend to end up as the guy to go to for tricky problems wherever I work, but I would fail 100% of whiteboard code-writing tests that gave any fucks about it being remotely correct in any particular language. I think the last time I could maybe have done it was when I knew only one language, and it was Perl, and I mostly wrote it in notepad—so, like, the first year or so after started writing code.