[darkstar999]

> I used to ask people to write code in interviews. This is terrible.

Bull! Last time I interviewed someone, they looked good on paper and decent on the phone. When it got down to solving a _simple_ problem on the whiteboard, he totally flopped. This is a totally realistic situation; we get together at least weekly and hammer out a solution on the whiteboard. Nerves could be an issue, but a good candidate should be able to solve an easy problem in a handful of minutes in an interview. (I'm talking _super_ easy, like joining one SQL table to another after saying that you are proficient)

[tptacek]

He didn't say coding was bad. He said coding on a whiteboard is bad. And, if you evaluated 100 strong developers by comparing their performance at a terminal and a whiteboard, my guess is that you'd quickly see that he's absolutely right about that --- not only would everyone outperform the whiteboard with a terminal, but that the whiteboard deficit would be highly irregular, defying any attempt to "handicap" for it.

[mwcampbell]

Coding on a whiteboard is also impossible or infeasible for candidates with some kinds of disabilities (e.g. blind). Sure, you can make an exception for those few candidates, but I suppose the fact that you even have to make an exception to your normal process for a particular candidate might bias you against that candidate.

[danielweber]

There are lots of accommodations I would need to do for someone who is blind, or deaf, or missing his hands. (I knew (through association) a developer who had hooks for hands.) The fact that you need to put some changes into your recruitment process for disabilities doesn't mean your recruitment process is necessarily broken.

[jebblue]

Thanks for articulating this. I'm going through the interview process again now so this is especially resounding to me.

[buckbova]

I would rather hire the strong developer that can code without autocomplete and write without spellcheck.

[tptacek]

That'll come in handy when the inevitable days-long autocomplete and spellcheck outage strikes.

[Apocryphon]

Or if the firm only uses Emacs.

[tptacek]

You use Emacs without autocomplete? That's not snark: I'm just here to tell you that Emacs has fantastic autocomplete and you should definitely look into it.

[wglb]

Uh, just hit tab, or at worst Meta-/

[willismichael]

M-x ispell

[spdy]

Why? Because he is good at memorizing things? That does not make the strongest developer.

[dllthomas]

Being able to memorize things is valuable to a developer. I'm with you that other things are more valuable, but you don't always have to make a trade-off.