Comment by mmorett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmorett | Hacker News Reader

Going out on a limb here, but I'll assume this is for Ruby only? Nothing in the landing page suggests this works for other languages.

I like the implementation, but if folks didn't like the NSA spying on them, they might not like this. This is wiretapping on steroids. I'm assuming the interviewer watches every keystroke. Creepy. I'm sure authors, well spoken and in full command of the English language, would get annoyed at someone staring at them to see if they can write a novel.

Tech interviewing is broken, but all solutions historically point to trying to watch a person code. I don't think that's the solution. When folks realistically work on multiple tech stacks with multiple frameworks and multiple languages, what is to be gained by zeroing in (deeply) on only one aspect of it.

This explains the need for a tech interview "study guide" posted earlier in the day. You're working on stuff contextually needed for your current job, but you'll be tested on stuff you don't use daily/monthly/yearly? That's insane.

Sorry if it isn't super highlighted, but if you scroll down a bit, you'll see that I support most languages you'd want to use this for (current notable exceptions are Go and Obj-C, the former of which is coming soon). Here's the list:

c, c#, c++, clojure, coffeescript, haskell, java, javascript, lua, php, python, ruby, scala, scheme

As for your philosophical objection, I think the true value prop of CoderPad is a bit more nuanced than you make it seem, respectfully. The primary benefits as I see them are twofold:

1. The right kind of candidate is wowed. It is a real fish landing back in the ocean moment. "Finally, this works like I've always dreamed it should." You look really sexy administering that interview.

2. It can help you see candidates who have a firm grasp of programming but not quite a great hold on syntax do better. I would argue the former is more important, and CoderPad let's you see them experiment with syntax without having to rack their brains over whether the parameter goes before "do" in ruby.

I do think it could be highlighted better that other languages are supported. I almost didn't sign up because I thought it was Ruby only after the tutorial.

It would obviously be ideal to have a demo for each language you support, but even if you simply highlight a bit clearer which languages you support right in the top part of the page rather than as a bullet point further down, that should really help your conversion rate.

I'm in the middle of a reworking of the landing page. I almost wish this got posted a few days later :)

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