The problem with take home interviews is that it could take one candidate an hour, and another every evening for a week.
Ideally the interviewer shouldn't be concerned about absolute code correctness, such as syntax or argument position, and should be interested more in how you're able to solve the problem, which should be a novel, yet simple task that doesn't require studying up on 200 level algorithms.
You want to hire developers (for permanent full time roles, at least) who have a good conceptual grasp of programming and logic, rather than their particular knowledge of a language or framework, or their ability to search on stackoverflow and run their code through a linter.
The worst interview problem I've been given was to write an AngularJS directive, I think literally to simply take an attribute and display it. I can't remember at the best of times the syntactical oddities of AngularJS, let alone when writing with pen and paper in an interview with no resources.
One of the better problems I was given was around parsing XML, from memory validating that opening tags matched closing tags, while allowing for self-closing tagsI remember the problem specifically didn't include any more complex facets of XML. Another was to reverse a string in-place ("hello world" -> "dlrow olleh"), and then to modify the algorithm to reverse the words but keep them in place ("hello world" -> "olleh dlrow"). Obviously in the real world you'd just use built in methods, but it's a problem that should be solvable without digging up your old lecture notes.
I've always felt comfortable writing code (or at least psuedocode) with a pen, but I think it's unfair to require a candidate to solve the problem on paper or whiteboard if they feel more comfortable typing on a computer instead, all that achieves is disadvantaging otherwise capable candidates who for one reason or another can't write code with a pen and paper. As long as they aren't googling "how to reverse a string in place", it immaterial what writing tool they use. If they feel more comfortable using a brush and papyrus, or carving a runestone, then that should be perfectly acceptable too (provided they bring their own writing material).
Ideally the interviewer shouldn't be concerned about absolute code correctness, such as syntax or argument position, and should be interested more in how you're able to solve the problem, which should be a novel, yet simple task that doesn't require studying up on 200 level algorithms.
You want to hire developers (for permanent full time roles, at least) who have a good conceptual grasp of programming and logic, rather than their particular knowledge of a language or framework, or their ability to search on stackoverflow and run their code through a linter.
The worst interview problem I've been given was to write an AngularJS directive, I think literally to simply take an attribute and display it. I can't remember at the best of times the syntactical oddities of AngularJS, let alone when writing with pen and paper in an interview with no resources.
One of the better problems I was given was around parsing XML, from memory validating that opening tags matched closing tags, while allowing for self-closing tagsI remember the problem specifically didn't include any more complex facets of XML. Another was to reverse a string in-place ("hello world" -> "dlrow olleh"), and then to modify the algorithm to reverse the words but keep them in place ("hello world" -> "olleh dlrow"). Obviously in the real world you'd just use built in methods, but it's a problem that should be solvable without digging up your old lecture notes.
I've always felt comfortable writing code (or at least psuedocode) with a pen, but I think it's unfair to require a candidate to solve the problem on paper or whiteboard if they feel more comfortable typing on a computer instead, all that achieves is disadvantaging otherwise capable candidates who for one reason or another can't write code with a pen and paper. As long as they aren't googling "how to reverse a string in place", it immaterial what writing tool they use. If they feel more comfortable using a brush and papyrus, or carving a runestone, then that should be perfectly acceptable too (provided they bring their own writing material).