Ask HN: Interviews – what is the point of whiteboard coding with perfect syntax?

3 pointsthrowaway_34521 comment

I'm finding writing code on a whiteboard totally throws me and is a completely different experience to being in front of a machine. I perform spectacularly poorly, with just zero "flow". What is the point of a whiteboard coding interview? Why can't you just equally put up a large screen and an IDE?

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Asking you to write code that's basically right is sort of stupid, but not that bad. Asking for syntax-perfect code is just stupid hazing; ideally you'll have a good interviewer that wants to see how you solve a problem.

If you have issues with these kinds of interviews here's my advice: write tests on the whiteboard, and explain you'll run the tests on the code after first pass. That way you don't get nitpicked to death over typos or simple mistakes, and you look like a careful programmer.

See https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/ for full writeup.

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