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Comment by pokstad | Hacker News Reader

Anyone else surprised how many candidates can’t code without autocomplete? I let candidates google answers and some still gripe about not having autocomplete. We code in a web app, so it makes me wonder how they would perform on a whiteboard with no google or compiler feedback.

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I can write code without autocomplete, but given that most of what I write is Swift for iOS/macOS where verbose naming is the rule (and thus, is probably what I'm interviewing to do) it can be painful because often I don't have method signatures, etc memorized because heavy autocomplete usage is a must to not drag down speed. When faced with writing in a plain editor or whiteboard I'll usually ask if I can write non-compiling pseudocode because I'm likely to have name errors all over the place.

Why is it surprising that people are less productive without their tools of choice? Why does it matter how they perform on a whiteboard without Google or compiler feedback? Is this how you work on a daily basis?

We set up all these artificial handicaps and are then surprised people do badly in interviews. Just let them code using their own machine and IDE, and any other tool they need.

I wonder if you'll also scoff when people start asking for Copilot or GPT.

No autocomplete is a major pain in the ass when you use different languages and forget if it's "#list", "len(list)","list.len()", "list.length()", "list.size()" or "list.length".

Also, grug hit dot on keyboard and list of things grug can do pop up magic

Also a decently designed API should work with autocomplete to help you use it.

> grug hit dot on keyboard and .. magic

Exackery. I seriously struggle when I'm using vim or nano on a remote box because they don't have autocomplete and I have to duckgo the syntax for bash. Bob help us all if I have to work in C++ like that with the 200 million variations on collection.add(). {eugh dunno}

I used to code without autocomplete, back in my 20's and early 30's. Pretty sure I couldn't do it anymore. I'm too fried.

When was the last time you professionally coded on a whiteboard with no google or compiler feedback?

In the old days (before covid) that was the norm. You’d write real or pseudo code on a whiteboard.

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