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by tsimionescu 1664 days ago
Never used coderpad, but my experience holding (online/remote) code interviews is that even using an IDE with standard error highlighting and color coding is just a waste of time - people start concentrating on fixing typos and adding keywords, as they are conditioned by the red squigglies, and that just detracts from the point of the problem. Having people actually try to make the code runnable would make things so much worse...

After experimenting with BYOIDE, we've stuck with online code style platforms (monotype fonts, no language-based Word-style auto-correct). This helps people focus on the problem, not the code itself, in my experience.
3 comments
neilparikh 1663 days ago
> Having people actually try to make the code runnable would make things so much worse...

I’m not sure I follow here. For me, programming is an iterative process: write a small chunk, test it out, write the next bit, and so on. Not being able to execute code seems like it would make that process harder, and force interviewee to essentially come up with the code “fully formed” all at once, which is hardly a useful or realistic skill.

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dnautics 1664 days ago
I've never run into this as a hirer. I don't test to see if a candidate can implement an algorithm from memory. In my test, I describe the steps for the algorithm and see if they can "follow the spec". I find most candidates (even seniors) can't, they can't help but make it 'more complicated than the spec asks for'.
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tsimionescu 1664 days ago
Neither do I. I want to see how they work through the problem, focusing on the problem. The IDE takes their focus away in my experience, they start correcting the squiqlies and adding extra bits of syntax that don't matter in a pseudo-code setting (such as adding closing brackets they forgot earlier) to avoid auto-spacing issues and so on.
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foobarian 1664 days ago
It may take a bit of extra time but one other positive of coderpad I found is that because it offers library-level auto-complete I noticed people relax a bit since they are not afraid I will ding them for not knowing some common method name or syntax.
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tsimionescu 1664 days ago
To me that's exactly the problem: I don't care if they call it sort or orderBy and so on, and I make this abundantly clear. Them spending time and mental energy to change the order of params or other things like that distracts from the core issues we are trying to solve together.
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