Coding challenges seem to favor a specific personality type not real world coding skills. It also tends to give successful candidates a false sense of confidence in their coding skills. Too much emphasis is placed on an interaction that really only tests a certain type of stress reaction. These challenges test ones ability to solve a well defined problem with a relatively simple solution deterministically. Real world problems are not well defined and the solution usually lies in cooperation.
This. I encountered a candidate whose entire experience was wrapped up in code golfing, which had me concered: can he even write real code? Golfing and real coding are entirely different practices. It's like expecting to complete in the PGA World Cup because you're under par at the local Family Putt Mini Golf, to abuse the analogy. ;)
Passionate generalist conquering the web one project at a time. Whether authoring libraries for node, JS, PHP, or Rust, I am always on the lookout for better solutions to common problems.
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USA
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Lead Developer & Co-founder at corpscrypt, CTO at REtech
Coding challenges seem to favor a specific personality type not real world coding skills. It also tends to give successful candidates a false sense of confidence in their coding skills. Too much emphasis is placed on an interaction that really only tests a certain type of stress reaction. These challenges test ones ability to solve a well defined problem with a relatively simple solution deterministically. Real world problems are not well defined and the solution usually lies in cooperation.
This. I encountered a candidate whose entire experience was wrapped up in code golfing, which had me concered: can he even write real code? Golfing and real coding are entirely different practices. It's like expecting to complete in the PGA World Cup because you're under par at the local Family Putt Mini Golf, to abuse the analogy. ;)
Well put