Ask HN: How to interview programmers

[nlabs]

I plan on hiring a programmer or two on a part time basis. These will be undergraduates in Computer Science. What kinds of questions would you ask to determine a programmers competence during an interview?

Edit: Im looking for Javascript and python programmers

[neiljohnson]

I found this post by Steve Yegge to be really helpful, it's aimed at phone screening but you can easily extend it to a face to face interview

http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-scre...

[rpledge]

Thank you, this is an excellent link. I'd upvote more if I could

[eneveu]

I'd bookmarked those posts: - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing... - http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-... (was a good post, but does not seem to be available anymore - it's in google cache though)

Also, since xmarks told me that those links were well ranked in the "hiring" category, you could look at other links from there: http://www.xmarks.com/topic/hiring

For example, http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring and http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprogP.html seem interesting

[eneveu]

Just stumbled on these links while reading http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253411 . While not strictly about interviewing, they might be of interest to you in your quest for developers:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...

http://stu.mp/2010/03/howto-recruit-rock-stars.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1451216/how-to-recruit-gr...

[eneveu]

Update about the malfunctioning link: it seems like http://inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good... works (removed "www" and the trailing slash). I've contacted the author so that he may do something about it :)

[scorpioxy]

Personally, i found that typical programmer interviews are a waste of time. I played both sides of the table and now I just ask for a small project as a sample to be written and brought to the interview and then discussed.

The discussion reveals a lot about the candidate from coding style to design decisions and shortcuts made. I am especially interested in the shortcuts and that the candidate understands what's wrong with them and have them explain why he/she took that route.

The sample can be as easy as a command line todo application or any utility that should take just a couple of hours to make.

Granted i don't do a lot of interviews, but when i did that's what i asked for. My boss on the other hand does typical interviews and the quality of the candidates shortlisted shows.