Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

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How is whiteboard coding reflective of engineer skill? At what time, during any job you've had, have you needed to instantly write code on a whiteboard, in front of peers, in a matter of minutes. Almost by definition, it's not reflective of engineering as actually practiced in a job.

I'm a far bigger fan of at-home coding exercises. Yes, I know, some people get annoyed at these because they think you're asking them to do free work in their spare time. But what other way is there to test people's coding under circumstances that most adequately mirror those of an actual job. E.g. they have a (relatively) unlimited amount of time, they have access to Google, their IDE, etc.

I'd much rather see what someone can come up with, in response to some novel problem, based on a couple of days programming, than what they can hack out on a whiteboard based on thirty seconds of thinking. The former seems closer to what coders are actually required to do, day on day.

> At what time, during any job you've had, have you needed to instantly write code on a whiteboard, in front of peers, in a matter of minutes.

Well, constantly, actually. Although I'm thinking of designs and snippets rather than actual functions. I guess it depends on what you're asking people to whiteboard during the interview. I agree that asking people to whiteboard qsort is silly, but walking through design alternatives with occasional code snippets to illustrate implementation options is a pretty basic skill.

> based on a couple of days programming

Either your company is very well-known and very attractive to candidates, or this is going to incredibly restrict your candidate pool.

I think smaller work samples are a great idea, I think code reviews are a great idea, but asking for two days sounds like a bit much, especially early in the process.

Although I'm thinking of designs and snippets rather than actual functions.

But that's the thing -- at whiteboard interviews, they don't ask you to produce "designs and snippets". They make you write actual working classes and functions.

> At what time, during any job you've had, have you needed to instantly write code on a whiteboard, in front of peers, in a matter of minutes.

Fairly regularly. Like when I'm explaining to someone how something works after they've asked me about it.

You regularly have to instantly write code for a problem from undergrad CS coursework on a whiteboard, and for which you haven't necessarily been involved in working on, in a constrained time with your job hanging in the balance?

I'm skeptical.

?? it's not something that's hard to do, it's like the foundation of my career. I use the principles all the time. my whiteboard /verbal / code solutions are based on that.

Using the principles all the time is different from regularly reimplementing CS textbook trivia under conditions in which your job is on the line. Where do you work, that you have to constantly re-invent the wheel over and over again under such constraints? I'd consider such a job to be hell. Not hard, just tedious and uninteresting to the point of pain.

I'd also not consider it to be an engineering job. What you describe seems to me to be more like a CAD technician job at an engineering firm.

No. You just changed the question. Even most whiteboard interviews don't meet your newly narrowed criteria. I just meant to state that I regularly write code on a whiteboard in my real work. You could argue it's time constrained too. At least as much as it would be in an interview.

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