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Oh boy. So now, we are supposed to be evaluated on our "thought process"? Based on what we type in the middle of programming? Talk about a completely ridicul

Oh boy. So now, we are supposed to be evaluated on our "thought process"? Based on what we type in the middle of programming? Talk about a completely ridiculous notion. First off, what is the point? What matters is the finished product. When I code, I try a bunch of different ideas, get to a working prototype to make sure that the idea can actually work, and then I start to whittle down to what I believe is the best solution. What does it matter what intermediate steps I come up with? All that matters is the code that I present for code review to my co-workers, and the code that I ultimately check-in. Trying to divine someone's "thought process" (which other people are completely unqualified to do, just based on what you see them type on the screen) is more stupid hoops to jump through in what is already becoming an increasing ridiculous hiring process for programmers.

kabdib 14y ago
I would probably do okay at this. But I know some good people who would not. One of them is nearly blind, and is one of the best systems programmers I know. Since I use Emacs nearly exclusively (Visual Studio for debugging, and other tools for writing documentation), I would revert to "I have to type code in a dumb editor" mode, and my fingers would be stupid. You'd see some stumbling around. I'm not sure it's useful knowledge for the interviewer.
typicalrunt 14y ago
Showing the mistakes I made while coding was actually something I liked about it. I would hope that after I write the code, I can justify some of the backspaces I used. Even when writing the fizzbuzz implementation in Ruby I found that I used the wrong conditional logic at first (puts "fizz" if i % 3 == 0) and then decided to change it to a more traditional if-else block format. Sure, that meant I took 2m10s to finish the test, but now I have proof why it took the extra 30 seconds. That's something I have no problem showing to a potential employer, because I can show how I'm constantly trying to improve my code even as I write it.

kabdib 14y ago

I would probably do okay at this. But I know some good people who would not. One of them is nearly blind, and is one of the best systems programmers I know. Since I use Emacs nearly exclusively (Visual Studio for debugging, and other tools for writing documentation), I would revert to "I have to type code in a dumb editor" mode, and my fingers would be stupid. You'd see some stumbling around. I'm not sure it's useful knowledge for the interviewer.

typicalrunt 14y ago

Showing the mistakes I made while coding was actually something I liked about it. I would hope that after I write the code, I can justify some of the backspaces I used. Even when writing the fizzbuzz implementation in Ruby I found that I used the wrong conditional logic at first (puts "fizz" if i % 3 == 0) and then decided to change it to a more traditional if-else block format. Sure, that meant I took 2m10s to finish the test, but now I have proof why it took the extra 30 seconds. That's something I have no problem showing to a potential employer, because I can show how I'm constantly trying to improve my code even as I write it.