> I personally would search for the mathematical formula and a text description that I could put on my second monitor as reference.
If you don't know the formula and they haven't volunteered it, you can simulate this search simply by asking, and any interviewer using this for a proper purpose will happily write it on the whiteboard for you and walk you through it if anything is still unclear. It's not what's being tested.
What is being tested is that you know enough about programming to understand pretty much nothing more than basic flow control, basic arithmetic and perhaps trivial IO.
A use of a question like this checks that you've at least read "programming for dummies", and roughly understand the overall concepts of programming not whether or not you're proficient enough to even fill an entry level position. It weeds out the candidates that are completely unable to program at all.
> Do you think they will be able to put there best foot forward in such an unnatural situation? They may blank, they may freeze and they may just be the type of person that reflects on an issue for a while before the set out to code.
I've had smart candidates blank on trivial problems, but there's a very noticeable difference between people who blank and people who just have no clue. With people who blank, you get them to calm down, you ask probing questions to get them talking, even if it's about the weather, and they will eventually start offering up small bits and pieces of an answer that makes sense and gets them to "unfreeze" and start solving the problem. Whereas with the type of candidates this type of interviewing should be used to get rid of, you get absolutely nothing and/or total bullshit.
> But first I would search for a standard library and avoid the effort all together.
That's something you might say as a "by the way", but it isn't what the interviewer will be looking for.
> I personally never work from verbal descriptions, I document the issue, and place it into a ticket system in which I work the tickets based on priority.
Fine, so consider the description on the whiteboard the ticket with your highest priority would be my response to that if a candidate were to raise this objection (though be honest, if they did alarm bells would already be going off in my head).
If you don't know the formula and they haven't volunteered it, you can simulate this search simply by asking, and any interviewer using this for a proper purpose will happily write it on the whiteboard for you and walk you through it if anything is still unclear. It's not what's being tested.
What is being tested is that you know enough about programming to understand pretty much nothing more than basic flow control, basic arithmetic and perhaps trivial IO.
A use of a question like this checks that you've at least read "programming for dummies", and roughly understand the overall concepts of programming not whether or not you're proficient enough to even fill an entry level position. It weeds out the candidates that are completely unable to program at all.
> Do you think they will be able to put there best foot forward in such an unnatural situation? They may blank, they may freeze and they may just be the type of person that reflects on an issue for a while before the set out to code.
I've had smart candidates blank on trivial problems, but there's a very noticeable difference between people who blank and people who just have no clue. With people who blank, you get them to calm down, you ask probing questions to get them talking, even if it's about the weather, and they will eventually start offering up small bits and pieces of an answer that makes sense and gets them to "unfreeze" and start solving the problem. Whereas with the type of candidates this type of interviewing should be used to get rid of, you get absolutely nothing and/or total bullshit.
> But first I would search for a standard library and avoid the effort all together.
That's something you might say as a "by the way", but it isn't what the interviewer will be looking for.
> I personally never work from verbal descriptions, I document the issue, and place it into a ticket system in which I work the tickets based on priority.
Fine, so consider the description on the whiteboard the ticket with your highest priority would be my response to that if a candidate were to raise this objection (though be honest, if they did alarm bells would already be going off in my head).