Any employer who interviewed me and wanted me to write scratch code from my head in order to be considered would be an employer that I would drop from consideration pretty much immediately.
Any employer who interviewed me and wanted me to write scratch code from my head in order to be considered would be an employer that I would drop from consideration pretty much immediately.
RIT accepts pretty much anyone who can breath and fails them the fuck out after taking their first year money. The failure rate amoung all of RIT was somewhere around 50%. The dorm floor I was in made up of engineers and CS majors was decimated by the second half of the year.
I find the practice a little better then the for-profit universities that just keep passing people to collect their money.
I watched a guy at RIT in my CS 2 lab, go pretty much crazy, start begging for help and eventually started pacing back and forth until he eventually punched a wall and started screaming.. it was ... scary..
Considering that every software engineering position I've interviewed for (admittedly there weren't that many) has asked me to do that, probably not a lot.
Considering that every software engineering position I've interviewed for (admittedly there weren't that many) has asked me to do that, probably not a lot.
I would, however, expect any technical person to be able to write logical pseudocode on a whiteboard. No syntax, but logic.
The only place where I haven't been asked to write any sort of code was for a consultant position that I decided to interview for just for experience. A lot of their reviews on Glassdoor suggested they were just a company looking for a bunch of code monkeys.
I think pseudocode is okay, but I think if you're pretty familiar with Java or Python you could write something out pretty quickly. My impression is that a lot of interviewers don't really give a shit about knowing API stuff, but you should probably be able to write a for loop and initialize an array from memory. Shows that you've at least coded something in your life ever.
I agree that asking people to whiteboard code in a specific language is common interview practice.
It's STUPID, but common.
Syntax is just semantics. The skillset you want is analysis, a good vocabulary of what's possible, what's difficult, what's impossible (or too complex, time heavy, etc to be cost effective if you prefer), the ability to do efficient and effective self-motivated research (know what you're looking for and how to find it, etc), and so on. The ability to write a hash sorting algo or what-the-frig-ever on command is not that useful.
I've done whiteboard regex tests of candidates before. But I make up questions on the fly that I could answer myself on a whiteboard with no reference.
I think it's fine to give a candidate a reasonable choice of languages to code in and ask them to write a whiteboard program in that language. You don't want to be too strict on obscure API points, but if a candidate doesn't have at least one language they can write more-or-less syntactically correct code in, they probably have barely done any actual programming.
Note: I'm in Software Engineering rather than IT, so standards may differ somewhat between fields.
I agree that asking people to whiteboard code in a specific language is common interview practice.
It's STUPID, but common.
Syntax is just semantics. The skillset you want is analysis, a good vocabulary of what's possible, what's difficult, what's impossible (or too complex, time heavy, etc to be cost effective if you prefer), the ability to do efficient and effective self-motivated research (know what you're looking for and how to find it, etc), and so on. The ability to write a hash sorting algo or what-the-frig-ever on command is not that useful.
Doing specific languages is usually pretty uncommon unless its like a small startup, and that's usually because they don't have the manpower to bring you up to speed and want people who can hit the ground running. Every mid to large size company I've applied for (not many, but they're all very similar) I've been able to just use C# and they have always said just use whatever language you're comfortable in.
I don't fault a company because they want to test specific knowledge if they're small. If I was gonna start my own group of people that I needed to pay to make a game in Unity for example, I would make sure they knew Unity, I would make sure they know C#. I don't want to pay them a livable wage to learn that stuff so they can come on board to be productive.
I discovered today that a shot of espresso is one ounce instead of two, making my morning coffee a quad shot containing ~280mg of caffeine, Equivalent to three Red Bulls.
I drink two of these in a day and have been seeking something more bitter for a while now.
If I had to code an addition function in VB I might google it, and I've been professional IT as a coder/"data guy" for 15 years...
Of course, Visual Studio has auto-complete and all...
But being able to whip out the syntax and write it on a napkin at lunch? Probably not. Pseudo-code, sure, but actual proper syntax on demand? Never.
Maybe fresh at the end of a course, yes.
We have to write code by hand. On paper. Because fuck you
All the CS exams at my school are like this. e.g. Here is problem X, write a program that will solve it -
This fucked me up so bad because I often backspace things when I'm writing code or realise I can solve the problem in a more efficient manner after scribbling around on paper (which for some reason they won't give more of, to encourage being concise). Kind of stupid in my opinion because I assume problem solving and the manner in which you approach a computer science problem is more important than making sure you remember to put all the brackets, tabs and semicolons in.
This fucked me up so bad because I often backspace things when I'm writing code or realise I can solve the problem in a more efficient manner after scribbling around on paper (which for some reason they won't give more of, to encourage being concise). Kind of stupid in my opinion because I assume problem solving and the manner in which you approach a computer science problem is more important than making sure you remember to put all the brackets, tabs and semicolons in.
I have a dumb friend (actually I haven't talked to him much since high school) who has become very cause driven since high school. He's part of a dumb group called "fight the new drug" which talks about "porn addiction", which I think is fine. The part I don't like is that occasionally I'll take a look at the articles that get posted on the blog and they are just like the most ill informed bullshit that I've ever laid eyes on. It's all almost purely anecdotal. The most recent was an MTV.com article that was just referencing random pubmed journal excerpts that were actually studies on internet addiction and somehow correlating that to porn addiction. It's just blowing my mind.
I should clarify why I haven't previously just filtered this nonsense from my Facebook. Originally I thought it was pretty funny because it was 100% anecdotal nonsense that they were trying to convince people with. Now it's just gotten to be a little too much.
Wow, really? A month or so ago I saw a video of some guys making fun of that whole group. I didn't think anyone besides it's creators actually believed it other than a few soccer moms and old people. I figured they just conned the high school kids into doing the videos or picked some sheltered homeschoolers. Also, haven't they decided that porn addiction and sex addiction aren't real addictions and that they're actually just a symptom of some other underlying issue as just another form of escapism?
On a lighter note, it looks like a strong possibility that my friend's brother just got arrested for making meth and having a sawed off shotgun. I'm not positive, but he has the same name, age, and location as listed in the article and it did sound like he'd take whatever drugs he could get his hands on from what I've heard in the past.
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Now, the standards for new students are much higher due to RIT's higher profile.
Of course, Visual Studio has auto-complete and all...
But being able to whip out the syntax and write it on a napkin at lunch? Probably not. Pseudo-code, sure, but actual proper syntax on demand? Never.
Maybe fresh at the end of a course, yes.
I find the practice a little better then the for-profit universities that just keep passing people to collect their money.
I watched a guy at RIT in my CS 2 lab, go pretty much crazy, start begging for help and eventually started pacing back and forth until he eventually punched a wall and started screaming.. it was ... scary..
I think pseudocode is okay, but I think if you're pretty familiar with Java or Python you could write something out pretty quickly. My impression is that a lot of interviewers don't really give a shit about knowing API stuff, but you should probably be able to write a for loop and initialize an array from memory. Shows that you've at least coded something in your life ever.
It's STUPID, but common.
Syntax is just semantics. The skillset you want is analysis, a good vocabulary of what's possible, what's difficult, what's impossible (or too complex, time heavy, etc to be cost effective if you prefer), the ability to do efficient and effective self-motivated research (know what you're looking for and how to find it, etc), and so on. The ability to write a hash sorting algo or what-the-frig-ever on command is not that useful.
Note: I'm in Software Engineering rather than IT, so standards may differ somewhat between fields.
I don't fault a company because they want to test specific knowledge if they're small. If I was gonna start my own group of people that I needed to pay to make a game in Unity for example, I would make sure they knew Unity, I would make sure they know C#. I don't want to pay them a livable wage to learn that stuff so they can come on board to be productive.
I drink two of these in a day and have been seeking something more bitter for a while now.
e.g. Here is problem X, write a program that will solve it -
This fucked me up so bad because I often backspace things when I'm writing code or realise I can solve the problem in a more efficient manner after scribbling around on paper (which for some reason they won't give more of, to encourage being concise). Kind of stupid in my opinion because I assume problem solving and the manner in which you approach a computer science problem is more important than making sure you remember to put all the brackets, tabs and semicolons in. Not really, they are towards the sour side.
I should clarify why I haven't previously just filtered this nonsense from my Facebook. Originally I thought it was pretty funny because it was 100% anecdotal nonsense that they were trying to convince people with. Now it's just gotten to be a little too much.
On a lighter note, it looks like a strong possibility that my friend's brother just got arrested for making meth and having a sawed off shotgun. I'm not positive, but he has the same name, age, and location as listed in the article and it did sound like he'd take whatever drugs he could get his hands on from what I've heard in the past.