| >Sometimes there's no time to google What do you mean no time to Google? You're never going to be able to remember everything. Sure the ideal situation is that you're fixing a bug where you happen to know the exact syntax for every piece of every library you need. But in the very likely situation where you don't, of course you have time to google. >and the ability to code something up quickly that also works correctly without having time to test it sometimes saves the day. Often becuase the company has optimized the hiring process for people who are good at doing this vs. people who are good at designing maintainable, durable systems. If 30 minute, million dollar fixes is a frequent enough occurrence to make aptitude at them the primary or even a major factor in your hiring decision, you have done something horribly wrong. >I do think coding interviews that people are complaining about are good, and getting in shape to do well in them is good for you. Having hired people using many different techniques, I think that these types of interviews are only a bit better than random chance. They are a separate skill from 99% of daily programming work, and they are gameable. I also think they are nothing more than a fad caused by people cargo culting Google. Not a single other technical discipline widley uses this kind of stage performance based interview process. Not one. >and you want to be talking to someone while you're doing it, as a sanity check. That makes zero sense. Sure sometimes it helps to talk through a problem if you're working with someone who is also trying to solve the problem with you, and you might want to explain a fix after you solve the problem but before you push as a sanity check. But if it's a hard problem you can kick rocks if you expect me to explain what I'm thinking about while I'm concentrating on solving it--while you're watching over my shoulder, and are not actively engaged in helping me solve the problem. You're just slowing me down. |