
Show HN: CoderPad, an etherpad + REPL for coding interviews - edmundhuber
http://coderpad.io?hackernews
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wasd
I think your pricing is a bit over complicated and feature list too wordy.

300 pads/month - clear makes sense

Unlimited pads under 15min - This shows up for every tier but I'm not really
sure what it means.

Save pads for later review - Just "Save Pads" gets the point across.

Custom pad branding - Just "Custom Branding" gets the point across.

24/7 support availability - Just "24/7 Support" gets the point across.

Just my two cents. Don't get me wrong, I think you did a great job with the
design and execution.

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johnnyg
No PHP? No matter your opinion of its merits, doesn't its size alone merit
inclusion?

PS. Upvoted anyway, because this is a nice tool and idea, and because your
demo process was slick!

~~~
jdiez17
No. PHP should never be used for anything, ever.

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n0mad01
booh, can't stand this childish php rants anymore ...

ruby and python can also be shitty in the wild as php, please stop such
foolish statements once and for all.

~~~
hoka
I thought he was being sarcastic and poking fun at the common HN sentiment,
but it's pretty clear from his other comment he is serious. Hope I don't have
to deal with dogma like this when I join the workforce.

~~~
jholman
I thought he was too.

But remember, the best way to avoid dealing with this dogma in the workforce
is to use some other language. It's a win/win... not only do you not have to
deal with silly PHP shame, but you ALSO don't have to deal with PHP, which
isn't as bad as the haters say, but is still pretty bad!

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exhaze
From an interviewing perspective, it would be nice if you could create pad
"templates" from which you could instantiate a pad with existing code that the
candidate would have to somehow modify/fix.

Also, I'd love to see how saving pads for later review actually works before
buying - even screenshots would go a long way in deciding if I want to pay.

Have you considered offering trial plans?

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akshayagarwal
Well, I built something similar which supports almost all languages and is
available as a free bookmarklet. Compiles your code using CodePad with one
click. Do give it a look <http://akshayagarwal.github.io/EtheRun/>

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dpiers
Nice site. :) I won AngelHack SF with a similar project last weekend
(<http://coderang.com>), so there's definitely interest in this space.

JSRepl is super cool, I can't believe people are just now starting to use it
in their own projects.

~~~
chourobin
Pretty cool and congrats! Are you going to be charging for coderang?

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dpiers
There will be some sort of fee for the interviewing tools (question templates,
interview invite emails, etc).

I'm hoping the tech screen income covers the costs of the site so I can make
the applications for online tutoring and possibly classroom demonstrations
free. The reason I made coderang was to help me teach my little sister how to
code over the Internet without making her set up a dev environment (she's 12),
so the potential educational applications are something I really care about.

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hesdeadjim
If you can figure out a way to get C++ working well in your silo'd
environment, I will gladly shell out whatever you are asking.

~~~
bjeanes
It looks like everything is evaluated client-side (even the Java), so I
believe you'd need a C++ implementation in JS ...

As far as I know, things like Emscripten
(<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki>) can compile C/C++ to JS, but
the compilation itself doesn't happen in JS.

~~~
nitrogen
Has anybody managed to build Emscripten using Emscripten? I couldn't find
anything with a quick search for terms like "nested emscripten" or "emscripten
gcc".

~~~
zwass
Regarding Emscripten bootstrapping:
<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/issues/430>

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spinningarrow
I like it. Could you add a keyboard shortcut to execute the editor code? Also
another thing that I find really useful in code editors is the ability to
surround text with parenthesis/quotes/whatever by just selecting the text and
typing in the character. Right now it works more like a traditional editor
where it just replaces the selected text.

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mmgutz
Seems to me Google Spaces is better for this kind of thing. I don't need to
see if code is 100% syntax correct much less compile to know if a potential
hire is a good fit and a problem solver.

I want to see him, in his own environment, how he solves problem. With spaces
I can observe via shared screen how the guy codes, how proficient he is with
his tools, which references he uses, etc. This reduces any barriers. More
importantly, I can interact with him as he codes a solution via microphone.

Google Spaces is free.

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taude
I'm not convinced a tool like this is a good first-step in weeding out
potential candidates.

Furthermore, as a candidate, I'd be leary of someone on the other end, not
paying attention, trying to multi-task, etc...

AND, this would make me feel like someplace is trying to hire a MONKEY if they
sent this to me as a first step in the hiring process.

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zachgersh
I wanted a tool like this to be used not only for interviews but for remote
pairing as well.

Say I am stuck on a particularly sticky problem. I'd love to be able to load
up some code and work through it with someone more experienced.

I know you can do this via Tmux but what if I don't want to setup Tmux and SSH
keys?

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Osiris
Have you tried Screenhero? It allows sharing a screen with both users being
able to use their mouse and keyboard at the same time.

There's also another startup that's a shared code editor with video chat on
the right, but I can't find the link to that right now.

~~~
jabo
Did you mean us: <http://codassium.com>

~~~
zachgersh
Nice, still says for interviews but I feel like it is just marketing copy at a
certain point.

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zaptheimpaler
Wow. Your site is beautiful, and tells me what the product is very quickly.
Great job!

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gizmogwai
Hum, sorry to ask, but why would anyone accept to write some java code in such
an environnement while it is so easy these days to allow screen sharing
(join.me) and let the interviewee use the tools (s)he masters?

~~~
nairteashop
I think it's nice to be able to quickly run the candidate's code in your
environment, without interrupting the candidate's flow. (It wasn't entirely
clear to me from the demo, but it did seem like you could evaluate the code
independently on your end without distracting the other person.)

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acc00
Please stop reinventing code execution sandboxes. This has already been
solved. Just integrate this with your collaborative editor.

<http://ideone.com/api>

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goronbjorn
This is kind of like Stypi, except with REPL, cool!

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jholman
This browser-based-REPL space is getting CROWDED. It also overlaps
substantially with the browser-based-IDE space. Let's see the execution
competition commence.

Time to start a comprehensive list, maybe, to make head-to-head comparisons.
Some examples: <http://c9.io> <http://pythonanywhere.com>

\--------

So, aside from this, listen, if this tool helps your company run technical
interviews, you're doing interviews wrong. (I assume the baseline is using
Google Docs for your preliminary phone-screen for technical interviews, which
in case you forgot, is free and ubiquitous). Let's go through coderpad's
bullet points of User Value Prop, saving the craziest for last:

1) Companies waste less time and money. Tie with Google Docs.

2) Companies observe candidates' actual coding behaviour. If the candidates
are IDE-dependant, no, so tie with GDocs. If they're not, tie with GDocs.

4) Interviewers spend less time nudging. Nudging is a FEATURE, not a bug. If
you want the candidate to get it for free, give it to them for free. In any
case, are syntax mistakes on line 12 REALLY WHAT YOU'RE INTERVIEWING FOR?!?

5) Interviewees demonstrate savviness.... by relying on auto-complete? Tie
with GDocs, _best-case_.

6) Intreviewees look smarter. Well, maybe for some interviewees. I whiteboard
flawlessly (such a useless superpower, except when interviewing), so this
gives me less chance to show off. Also this highlights all your syntax
mistakes, for those of you who make them, which arguably makes you look worse.
Overall across all interviewees, I call this one a wash.

7) Candidates solve more problems, by not wasting time asking about API
details.

GOD NO. WRONG.

Listen, candidates, when you're at the whiteboard, you should KNOW what
methods the object should IDEALLY have, and you should have confidence that if
need be you can re-implement those methods, and so you just say "I assume
array has a max(), if you need it implemented just tell me." And in the time
you took to utter that line, you plan out the next line of good code, and you
look smarter. If the interviewer cares, show them. If they don't care, hand-
wave past it. The way you figure whether they care or not is you make a
reasonable guess whether they care, and tell them you're happy to be
corrected.

Interviewers with a basic competence level should be helping their candidates
out with this, by the way. Unless what you really care about is whether they
know the syntax of max() by heart... in which case you'd better not use
coderpad, because it's a cheat sheet! (Note: since I want to fail 100% of
interviews that care about whether I know the syntax of some ruby array
method, using coderpad works against me too in that situation).

3) Companies unambiguously know if the candidate has solved the problem.

Wow, this one's tough to even start with.

First of all, your interviewer is hopefully competent enough to over-solve the
problem, given that they get to think about it in periods of non-stress, with
colleagues, and they expect candidates to solve it alone under stress and time
pressure. So hopefully they already know all the corner-cases that they care
about.

Second, at the risk of repeating myself, if you're grading for precise syntax
in an interview, (2a) you're probably grading for the wrong thing (but maybe
not), and (2b) you don't want the candidate "cheating" by using coderpad. So
who cares if they made minor mistakes that you wouldn't catch by hand?

And third, if the question is interesting enough to be a hard interview
question (as contrasted with FizzBuzz, which does have a place in phone
screens), then it's probably hard enough that _running it_ is not going to
find all the important edge cases. Hard questions are usually hard for one of
these reasons: they have crazy corner cases (running it on golden-set data
tells you nothing), or they have a naive solution that's too slow and you want
a fast solution (how does running it on coderpad help with this?), or both.
They're rarely hard in the "can't get it to work AT ALL" sense.

Basically, if your interviewer can't reliably-enough determine, in his or her
head, the correctness of the solution, in every dimension that matters to your
hire/no-hire decision, you're lost. Hoping for an IDE to help you is...
depressing.

With all that in mind, I question the honesty of trying to sell this product.
Even if I think the product is pretty.

~~~
jonny_eh
You could have just said "Why use this when I could use
<http://collabedit.com/> for free? It's 'good enough'"

I'm personally excited to try this app out though this week on a candidate.
There's no way in hell I'd use Google Docs. The lack of auto-indentation just
kills it as a tool for writing code for me.

~~~
jhchen
If you like collabedit give <http://www.stypi.com> a try!

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ninetax
Cool! How do you execute everything in the browser?

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btipling
It's the same as <http://repl.it/> the source is at
<https://github.com/replit/jsrepl/>

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hkon
Will you use your skill for good or for making life harder for colleagues.

