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I couldn't help but read this and think about technical interviews that involve the candidate being asked to write code on a whiteboard - no Google, no code lin

I couldn't help but read this and think about technical interviews that involve the candidate being asked to write code on a whiteboard - no Google, no code linting/hinting/completion etc. I'm very much in favor of candidates being asked to write some code under more realistic conditions, including finding solutions to parts of the exercise online. Of course, they should then be able to explain to the interviewer(s) why they chose a particular solution and walk the interviewer through the code they borrowed/adapted.

jonnytran 14y ago
Agreed. Nowadays in technical interviews, I make it a point to say that I would google the problem. Not googling just because it's an interview is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people stuck on real problems -- i.e. inside the box, instead of outside the box thinking. If you were given a real problem, would you limit your problem solving approaches to those implied by the context? That's exactly the kind of person I don't want to hire.
zv 14y ago
While this may be good for code under 100 lines, anything more requires using Google. Either it be simple trivial things like email regexp (for those who don't have the luxury of having premade libraries for them) or harder things like algorithms.
- eru 14y ago
  Getting a precise email regular expression straight is much harder than most questions about algorithms you will ever be asked in an interview.
- madisp 14y ago
  I have yet to see a good email regexp while using Google. Most of them have huge troubles - either not having proper Unicode support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Internationalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Internationalizat...) or not allowing the +label thing that Google is doing for instance. If you want to validate an email, make sure that there is an '@' character in there followed by some chars and a '.' with some other chars at the beginning and the end :) If you really really want to validate an email then force the user to verify it.

jonnytran 14y ago

Agreed. Nowadays in technical interviews, I make it a point to say that I would google the problem. Not googling just because it's an interview is exactly the kind of thinking that gets people stuck on real problems -- i.e. inside the box, instead of outside the box thinking. If you were given a real problem, would you limit your problem solving approaches to those implied by the context? That's exactly the kind of person I don't want to hire.

zv 14y ago

While this may be good for code under 100 lines, anything more requires using Google. Either it be simple trivial things like email regexp (for those who don't have the luxury of having premade libraries for them) or harder things like algorithms.

eru 14y ago
Getting a precise email regular expression straight is much harder than most questions about algorithms you will ever be asked in an interview.
madisp 14y ago
I have yet to see a good email regexp while using Google. Most of them have huge troubles - either not having proper Unicode support (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Internationalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Internationalizat...) or not allowing the +label thing that Google is doing for instance. If you want to validate an email, make sure that there is an '@' character in there followed by some chars and a '.' with some other chars at the beginning and the end :) If you really really want to validate an email then force the user to verify it.