[hirsin]

> mks.io/ac2

This is an interesting setup. What stops someone from creating a PR or fork with the answers?

Also, what kind of answers are you looking for from a candidate? When giving interview advice after seeing things like this, I'm not sure if "the" answer involves data hiding. Would that go beyond what you expect of a candidate? If not, I can appreciate how hard it would be to juggle the various incoming skill levels.

[harshoninternet]

Nothing stops them from doing that. We had that happen in the past, and just changed the requirements around a bit. However, immediately after completing the coding challenge, applicants are given a Technical Interview, and you can't really hide behind someone else's answer when you're asked to explain the code you wrote. We also have them create a new application during the technical interview, which we don't publish on the web. They pair with one of the interviewers on creating another toy application.

What we are looking for is not necessarily one given answer, instead, we look for how well someone can explain the answer they wrote. If they can take someone through their thought process for whatever decisions they made, they're likely going to be a good programmer.

Juggling various incoming skill levels is always a challenge. You can't perfectly line up every student, but you can plan for it in the curriculum. The admissions process helps us identify people who can already teach themselves programming.

[dopamean]

I'm an instructor at MakerSquare and regularly conduct technical interviews. I just wanted to add to Harsh's response re: people taking other peoples answers. Completing the admissions challenges that are posted online will only get you an interview. Once on site we only spend a few minutes, 10 at the most, reviewing their solutions to the admissions challenges before we move on to other questions. It is very, very apparent within just a minute if the applicant did not actually write their own solution.