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Comment by evanreas | Hacker News Reader

it is not to test "coding ability" at all! it tests, drive, passion, competitiveness, motivation... the skills that are more important in a startup than raw ability to code.

the coder who tries his hardest on every second in sports, is, more likely than not, going to be the better colleague because he/she will do whatever it takes to win.

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My sport of choice is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The person who "tries his hardest on every second" is thought of as a spaz, and is inexperienced. Such people try to overcome their lack of skill with brute force. On an experienced person, it fails.

Part of any sport is knowing when to push as hard as you can. In BJJ, it means using your strength when you have leverage, and not trying to force something when you don't have leverage. I think that has transfer to other areas.

I've spent a bunch of years in the sport, and I do indeed try my hardest every second. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm trying to neck crank a dude from the guard, but it does mean that I am always working. If you watch some of the great practitioners of our sport, Marcelinho comes to mind, they are almost always moving, always improving. Although he's not brute forcing his way into a position, I guarantee he is trying his hardest every second.

Maybe this is purely a semantic argument, but I hate when people say that as you advance you work less hard. You work just as hard, you just work in different ways.

It's semantics. I equate "tries his hardest every second" with people who are using all of their effort all of the time. I am not doing that, yet I am always working hard. I would call that "doing the best that I can every second" to differentiate it from someone going wide-open all the time to make up for lack of skill.

Knowing when and how to conserve energy is an important part of the game as well.

I think the same is true of all martial arts, based on my experience with traditional karate (I trained with a man who received his black belt from Funakoshi)

good point. it is the hollistic view of how somebody performs that should be observed.

I have had committed colleagues, and competent ones. I know which I prefer to work with.

Total nonsense. I don't care about sports, I find the exercise banal, so I'm not going to be invested in it. It's even easier to determine someone's passion by talking with them than it is their coding ability.

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