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by vips7L 2612 days ago
> Nine times out of ten a candidate scores low because they overlooked an infinite loop or code would crash on boundary conditions

Why does this even matter? They're writing the code on a whiteboard, without being able to compile or debug, in 20 minutes. Does Google really expect code to be correct and production ready in 20 minutes?

1 comments

> ... and candidate wasn't able to realize that even with hints.

He said why. Why did you misquote?

That is why they were "dinged".

Not why those things matter in whiteboard coding.

The standard solution to my problem is on the order of 12 lines of code. I don't expect it to be perfect or "production ready", but the infinite loop should stick out like a sore thumb. I do expect candidates to demonstrate that they recognized that problem, and to at least make some attempt to check that they didn't overrun the bounds of an array in the 30 minutes they have.