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I personally dislike whiteboard interviews as well. Sometime ago they ask me in an interview to code on the whiteboard in perfect Java code no pseudocode allowe

I personally dislike whiteboard interviews as well. Sometime ago they ask me in an interview to code on the whiteboard in perfect Java code no pseudocode allowed. I'm not sure why you should want that.... I also done some challenges for different companies. Most of the time they are something like create X in N amount of time those I like they make so much more sense to me as you can see the result and talk about it especially when you can do it from your own home on your own computer.

michaelt 12y ago
no pseudocode allowed. I'm not sure why you should want that.... Some interview candidates, when invited to write pseudocode, will write pseudocode imprecise enough that you can't tell if they will make good programmers. For example, if a candidate is asked to write a bubble sort and they write: Take the input array, go through every element comparing it to the one after it and, if they're in the wrong order, swap them. Repeat until you get through without any swaps. Did I see the candidate think about off-by-one errors, like missing the last item or exceeding the array's bounds? Did the candidate think about common edge cases, like zero-item and one-item arrays? Did the candidate think about whether the function would work if the array contained two identical entries? Did the candidate check their loop will eventually terminate? Does the candidate know how to write a working computer program, rather than describing an algorithm in vague terms? With the pseudocode answer I can't tell if the candidate did those things, because the solution doesn't show me what I need to see. And yet, if you've asked them to use pseudocode, they've done exactly what you asked of them. That's why my preference is to say "use a real language and tell me the tests you'd perform on it, but I'm not fussed about semicolons and exact names of library functions." - it tends to get you a solution that lets you tell if the candidate knows how to program.

michaelt 12y ago

no pseudocode allowed. I'm not sure why you should want that.... Some interview candidates, when invited to write pseudocode, will write pseudocode imprecise enough that you can't tell if they will make good programmers. For example, if a candidate is asked to write a bubble sort and they write: Take the input array, go through every element comparing it to the one after it and, if they're in the wrong order, swap them. Repeat until you get through without any swaps. Did I see the candidate think about off-by-one errors, like missing the last item or exceeding the array's bounds? Did the candidate think about common edge cases, like zero-item and one-item arrays? Did the candidate think about whether the function would work if the array contained two identical entries? Did the candidate check their loop will eventually terminate? Does the candidate know how to write a working computer program, rather than describing an algorithm in vague terms? With the pseudocode answer I can't tell if the candidate did those things, because the solution doesn't show me what I need to see. And yet, if you've asked them to use pseudocode, they've done exactly what you asked of them. That's why my preference is to say "use a real language and tell me the tests you'd perform on it, but I'm not fussed about semicolons and exact names of library functions." - it tends to get you a solution that lets you tell if the candidate knows how to program.