[0xDEFC0DE]

Unlike the other code-slinging gods who walk amongst us in this thread, I prefer coding challenges because I'm pretty mid-level and average and I do actually need a job. And I hate whiteboarding. No one should do whiteboarding for code.

[shantly]

Agreed. Make me whiteboard or live-code if you wanna make me look and feel like I've not actually had over a dozen years of productive experience designing systems and shipping code and fixing other people's broken crap, and you'd love to watch me stress out and forget how to write a damn loop so you can complain on HN about how I was clearly lying about my experience & abilities and that's why you have to make people live-code or whiteboard. Challenges are, at least, preferable to that, for sure.

[lfowles]

Same, I've found that I get further in the interview process when dealing with companies that screen with a coding challenge.

[traderjane]

Whiteboarding is like coding except you don’t need to get the syntactical details of your loop right. It’s writing out your thoughts not just in pseudo code, but perhaps also in freehand visualizations. This makes it the most ergonomic and beginner friendly programming language ever.