part of me can't believe this was such an epiphany for this guy.
i've found the best way to screen candidates is to just ask them to sign up on project euler and work through at least three problems, in any language, and mail me the results. the quality of code i get so far is quite representative of the quality of the employee on the job.
yes, they could google the answers, but i disqualify the easiest-to-google questions (sum of multiples of 3 and 5 up to 1000, i'm lookin' at you). but honestly it doesn't matter - you can tell if they do because they can't explain it. and i can generally weed out anyone in the first place who would try to google the answer just from a skype conversation...
I have a similar completion rate and for a while I was really gung-ho about doing a Project Euler problem daily. Unfortunately, I discovered that there are sites which purport to have completed all 252(or maybe 253 now) and give out solutions.
That there are people who have cheated their way to high score, completely ruined the enjoyment of the site. It does seem a bit silly, that your own enjoyment of a problem is tarred by someone else's exploits. It shouldn't affect you, but it ultimately does, in some ways that someone else cheating in MMORPG affects one's own rat killing efforts.
That's really impressive. I'd interview anyone who showed such initiative. It's so common to interview "developers" who don't seem like they have any interest or passion about their work.
i've found the best way to screen candidates is to just ask them to sign up on project euler and work through at least three problems, in any language, and mail me the results. the quality of code i get so far is quite representative of the quality of the employee on the job.
yes, they could google the answers, but i disqualify the easiest-to-google questions (sum of multiples of 3 and 5 up to 1000, i'm lookin' at you). but honestly it doesn't matter - you can tell if they do because they can't explain it. and i can generally weed out anyone in the first place who would try to google the answer just from a skype conversation...
project euler hasn't failed me yet.