
Show HN: I send out a weekly CS topic overview and code interview question - bcjordan
http://codingforinterviews.com/
======
robomartin
I hate code-writing puzzles during interviews. I don't use them at all. Why?
Precisely because of methods such as this one where someone might memorize or
learn a bunch of patterns to common puzzles going around. They come in and ace
the interview test. Does it really tell you anything about the person other
than they can train themselves like an intelligent monkey to produce the
correct output given an input?

My preference, by far, is to spend time discussing ideas and approaches to
solving problems. I don't want to see code. I want to see into his/her brain.
How do you think? How do you slice and dice a problem to try to get to core?
How good are you at intuitively choosing a good data representation? Do you
bring-up alternative approaches to optimize for size vs. raw speed or other
parameters? What questions do you ask?

Anyhow, whether the person can actually write two lines of code or not can be
ascertained by looking at prior work (if available). The most interesting
aspects of a programmer --the real reasons you might not want to let him(her)
get away-- have nothing whatsoever to do with how quickly they can write a
bunch of loops or if they have memorized five sorting algorithms. Nah, the
real value is in how they think. That's what you want to hire them for.

EDIT: Some of the best, most creative and versatile programmers I have known
could not write code without a set of reference books next to them. Why?
Because they don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the various languages they
might use. They'd excel at dissecting data to reveal structure and
representation and then choosing a good approach to solve the problem but more
often than not had to have a library of various CS and language books around
them to support their work. My point is that these people would have failed
interview puzzles yet they contributed to and sometimes single-handedly drove
projects that generated millions of dollars for the companies that employed
them.

~~~
nevster
We get our interviewees to sit in front of an IDE of their choice and write
some simple code. And I mean simple! No fancy algorithms or tricks.

I ask them to write a method that takes a list of Strings and returns a single
String which is all those Strings concatenated together with spaces in-
between. And oh my word, how people fail. It's truly frightening.

~~~
robomartin
This is interesting. I'd like to know more. Are you targeting young
inexperienced programmers? Are they just out of school? What kind of filtering
do you have prior to bringing them in?

I have never hired a recent grad for programming.

I used to own an electronics manufacturing company near UC Riverside
(California) some time back. We had pick-and-place machines and the usual
assortment of equipment you'd have for the assembly and testing of circuit
boards. We made microprocessor-driven industrial motor controls.

During that time I thought it'd be great to hire engineering students. As
someone who was a capable electronics hobbyist before I even touched college I
assumed that these kids would be hell-bent to work in electronics as I was
when I was in college. Not so. I probably went through 15 or 20 of them before
I found a couple that were worth the effort.

When it came to programming I never hired anyone with anything less than five
years of demonstrable experience.

~~~
nevster
We were looking for experienced Senior Java Developers. I'm talking about
people who have 10 or more years of experience on their CV, working for well
known companies - large banks etc. We give the CVs a fairly good going over
before deciding to get someone in. They've also responded to a short
questionnaire about their experience with agile methodologies. (And of course,
the job agencies have supposedly already done some sort of filtering.)

Interview nerves are one thing but even if you're nervous you should still be
able to do the equivalent of multiplying 5 * 10.

~~~
robomartin
I am speechless. Don't know what to say.

~~~
nevster
Just for some clarification, when I say fail, I really mean fail to do it
well.

Most of them at least manage to get it working but don't necessarily cover all
the problems that can arise and can get it to 100%, with some prompting.

It's a real joy when someone comes in who obviously loves programming. Like
night and day.

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ppierald
No Terms of Service or Privacy Policy. I can imagine having a list of email
addresses with people interested in getting coding interviews could be
interesting to the right people with enough money.

~~~
farmdawgnation
There being a TOS or Privacy Policy doesn't actually mean a company won't sell
your emails. It just means they're going to say they're not going to sell your
emails. Harsh, but true.

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barrkel
You know something that's easy to unsubscribe from? RSS.

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bcjordan
I'm also looking for guest posters with real interview questions from their
company, or anyone who would like to guest post a CS topic overview. I can be
reached at my username at gmail.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
Thank you so much for doing this! Really excited to solve problems and improve
my programming chops!

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bcjordan
If the site or signup form fail, I will also merge signups from this Google
form:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhFNUV...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhFNUVMSDduZW1nWXEtcm42ME1VYmc6MQ)

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Sean-Der
This is an awesome idea bcjordan! I signed up, I am really excited to get the
first email. If this stays CS only, and avoids the pitfalls of 'the industry'
this might quickly become my favorite thing of the week :D

Best of luck with it!

Also, any plans to monetize it? What are your long terms with the project,
hopefully it will be something to keep you interested for a long time.

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nirvanatikku
Clevverrr..! Having gone through this whole process recently, I can appreciate
how this would have come in handy.

FYI: I had used <http://www.careercup.com/> extensively.

~~~
Jagat
Except for Gayle Laakman's extensive marketing and the heavy user base that
followed, I don't see why careercup is popular in the first place. It is a
terrible website with ads for her two books taking up half of the home page
space. It would be great if someone could start a stackexchange site for
discussing CS interview questions; I'm pretty sure the quality of questions
and discussions would be better then.

~~~
nirvanatikku
um.. I think it's popular because it essentially _is_ like a stackexchange for
CS interview questions..... it has a ton of questions, some of which
_actually_ popped up during interviews. As for the ads, I had no trouble
ignoring them.

~~~
Jagat
"it essentially is like a stackexchange for CS interview questions"

except for the bad website and tons of ads.

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pendext
I signed up after reading about this on Reddit. As someone who is looking for
a first development job (graduating in May), this is a great resource.

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plaguuuuuu
So.. you basically created a weekly blog consisting of interviewy programming
puzzles and the only way I can read it is via _email_...

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Zaheer
I created something similar a few months ago to send out a interview question
every other day. The time constraints of maintaining it got to me though (I'm
a university student myself) and I recently stopped sending out question of
the day. I have plans to revive it later but for right now its in 'hiatus'
mode so to speak.

Check it out at: www.InterTechTion.com

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piqufoh
Sounds great! Some thoughts: Your email field doesn't support tags
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Address_tags> and When entering an
address with tags it fails with no error.

~~~
bcjordan
Oi! Seems email '+' characters were being decoded into ' ' along the way.
Patched, and I'm searching for records of those addresses to send invites.

Thanks for reporting!

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Permit
I signed up and this seems pretty cool. FYI: "Mediocre programmer?" is too
long for its container and defaults to "Mediocre programm...".

I'm not sure if it's my screen or fonts or something, but I thought you might
like to know.

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ktran
Ahh, after I signed up for PyCoder (curtailed Python newsletter every Friday),
I thought of doing something similar but tailoring to college students. You
beat me to it! Awesome project bcjordan :)

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zackzackzack
The signup flow was really well done. A minor nitpick: put the social buttons
at the bottom of the model after the (see sample -> signup -> congrats)
process.

I'm excited to get these emails!

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B-Con
The confirmation e-mail doesn't have any link back to the website. Hopefully
your weekly messages do, it's where most of us will look for a link if we want
to share it with others.

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bevan
Looking forward to this- the last couple similar services (periodical
design/coding challenges) that I've signed up for fizzled out after 1-2 weeks.
Hope this one sticks around!

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josh_blum
seems like a very cool idea! i'm exciting to use it and see where it goes.

You do have some bugs to work out though, the UI isn't very consistent
throughout the site and somehow I got redirected to here:
<http://interviewpractice.herokuapp.com/> and now can't see anything. I also
had trouble the signup process and had to reset my password to join.

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adolph
Including the .vcf in the confirmation email is much smoother than those "add
us to your contacts" messages. Very nice touch.

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brainstew
Is the closed area already working? I tried resetting my password and logging
in, and got "Invalid email or password."..

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mrbgty
Is that leaf icon on the sign up button some sort of standard icon now for
sign ups? I'm not sure I understand it.

~~~
bcjordan
I thought it looked pretty.

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pfraze
Glad to find this -- not interviewing right now, but always keeping up on my
skillset.

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jmcgough
I like it! The "see a sample" modal looks really cluttered, though.

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zallarak
This is awesome! Thanks for putting it together.

