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My favourite coding challenge is linked lists. Most modern programming languages don't design their api for linked lists so the algorithm is very similar.
But I don't agree with a company using common coding challenges in their interviews. It's not an accurate representation of the work for a candidate and its not an accurate representation of the skills of a candidate for a company. -
As an interviewer I have to say that what interests me most is the approach you take to solving the challenge. The questions you ask (if you do), how long do you think about the task, can you identify the corner cases or you just take the happy path, etc tell me more about the candidate than the code.
The resulting code is, however, a filter for those that try to cheat by learning 'common interview questions' but can't in fact code. -
@SnafuAI I see how you can derive that information when someone is working on an actual task that takes hours or even a few work days to accomplish, especially when the interviewer leaves out some important facts deliberately, but not when working on a 30 minute small scale code challenge
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@don-rager my company gives pre-written to candidates a week before their interview and ask them to review the code and during the interview they have to explain why they think some parts can be done better and why they haven't changed other parts.
It seems like a good way to go
There's no favourite coding challenge for me. Of course I do them when I'm asked to but I don't think anyone can derive how Well someone works from these short toy challenges.
I once had a proper prototyping Challenge that was really fun. I had to Work on it in advance to the interview. I had to define the scope and how much time I will spend in it in advance and then explain and defend the scoping and all technological/architecture decisions and handle proper criticism in the interview. No bullshit coding challenges Had to be solved :)
I think these prototyping challenges will Tell you way more about an applicant and his worth as a dev than those little challenges ever could.
rant
wk192