> Regarding your first point it's extremely rare in my experience to have an interviewer expect perfect/compiable code when whiteboarding (nearly every whiteboa

> Regarding your first point it's extremely rare in my experience to have an interviewer expect perfect/compiable code when whiteboarding (nearly every whiteboarding exercise I've ever done has been prefaced with the interviewer explicitly stating this). They're looking for how you go about solving a problem, they don't care about missing semicolons. The interview instructions Amazon gave me prior to my in-person interviews specifically said my whiteboard code would be judged on syntax and that I was expected to produce working code, not pseudocode. They are not the only company that has said this to me, so I do not think it is "extremely rare". > As for your second point, just because the ability to easily "inspect the actual work done" is not practical in one profession doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered in a completely different profession where it is practical. For a large portion of programmers, it is impractical. The only way most programmers have representative examples they can show that level of detail in is to do professional-quality work outside of their day job. Expecting them to do so is unreasonable.