Ask HN: What language do you use for programming Job interviews? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What language do you use for programming Job interviews?

1 pointconqrr6 comments

I was taught C++ in school during 2010 and in my undergrduate(till 2014). However I have been coding in Ruby professionally. Now I am in a bit of dilemma as to whether I should code purely in Ruby for interviews as well? I could brush up my concepts in C++ anytime. But it would be an overhead and introduce plenty of ways of making things go wrong(memory mgmt, pointers, bulky code, STL knowledge etc. Do I just stick with Ruby for everything where I can code comfortably now.

View on HN

Stick with what makes you happy. If you want to work in Ruby, target jobs that are Ruby/Rails oriented and keep on coding in Ruby. Unless you are interviewing for an engineer position that require C/C++ you're most likely better off sticking to Ruby jobs.

On the other hand I've had job interviews where they used a language I wasn't proficient in (Python, Scala) but they allowed me to craft the solution to problem in Ruby but expected me to port it to the other language. Employers these days seem to be flexible, especially when the candidate is intelligent and picks up technology easy.

I dont mind a non Ruby job at all. Its just that since I have no real C++ experience, just picking it up for interviews (which I had done so far) doesn't seem like a good idea somehow.

For interviews just go with what is most comfortable to you. Honestly, do you really want to be coding during an interview and have to worry about when you call `malloc`, when to release memory, how many `*` to put in front of your pointer?

I'm not criticizing C++, but for an interview you should go with the simplest language that makes you happy.

English?

I meant programming Languages. Duh!!

Sorry - I was being annoying. I do find the use of Duh amusing tho. It reminds me of my children and then me adding duh to the end of their names - that's very annoying but it cured them of their affliction. ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com