[pfranz]

As an interviewer I'd prefer a whiteboard and an open discussion. With a computer I have to deal with pedantic reality instead of discussing the concepts or approach. You also need a projector or a large screen if it's more than one other person in the room.

At one interview I was given a coding test (this was alone and timed). I was put into a separate room and pointed to a computer. It was a Windows box and Notepad.exe was the only thing I saw. I may have found Nodepad++, but I'm pretty sure it didn't have a Python interpreter. I hadn't used a Windows box in 10 years and my preferred environment is Vim. After the test they pulled me into a different room with the interviewers and discussed the code. This test was terrible for multiple reasons. I was asked to interview by a senior person who was working there who admitted that part of the process sucked and was pushing to improve it.

Even at large places that invest heavily in hiring, I don't see them developing/maintaining a test candidate environment, they're not likely going to hand you someone else's account in a production environment, and if they have a generic PC with a guest account, things are going to be missing or out of date. It'd be preferable for me to bring in my own laptop (but that discriminates against people with desktops or who don't have home computers).

[lazyasciiart]

I agree with the 'easier discussion' aspect of a whiteboard, but I feel that any whiteboard test should therefore be asking for pseudocode and explicitly disregarding the pedantic reality of syntax.

[pfranz]

Yes. I do think there's a benefit in having a reference language--just don't be pedantic. For example, certain design patterns might be needed for C++ that are built into a language like Python. Knowing which libraries the candidate (or the company) leans on is a good topic to discuss. Pure pseudocode might be too generic to suss this out. It depends what you're evaluating them for. There's little to no value in testing them on things like mismatching parens or typos in variable names (I've heard stories about people getting called out on those things using a whiteboard).