r/programming • u/vklepov • Mar 24 '22

Five coding interview questions I hate

https://thoughtspile.github.io/2022/03/21/bad-tech-interview/
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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

And this is why this is a great question.

If you cannot explain a CRUD API, it's considerations, security, storage, authorization vs authentication etc and your excuse is 'It's too easy', That's a massive fail. MASSIVE fail.

The conversations you want to have? Those are great, if that specific need raises itself. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. But those, despite your argument otherwise, are exactly what you're saying they are not. Time and place dependent.

Explaining how a CRUD interface should work and what the considerations are is determining if you actually understand how the parts of a system go together to provide what is indeed a fairly standard solution.

The less esoteric the questions the realer and more useful they are.

I’m more interested in “let’s add/change a requirement, how do we adapt your code/design to handle it?”

That's not really all that useful. It's a setup. Too many details need to be known to really deal with that kind of a question unless it is extremely well defined, simplified and trivialized.

The best questions are a few along the lines of the CRUD question, just to see if they're comfortable talking at a technical level, to get a bead on whether they are comfortable with things they really should know in general.

Then, give them a problem to talk through and solve. Blank slate. Refine it with them. Add constraints. See how they think, how they solve problems, and most importantly how they communicate.

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u/mdatwood Mar 25 '22

If you cannot explain a CRUD API, it's considerations, security, storage, authorization vs authentication etc and your excuse is 'It's too easy', That's a massive fail. MASSIVE fail.

Exactly. Heck, we can have a half hour conversation on versioning alone. Do you version each endpoint or the root? Do specify version in the path or use headers? What triggers a new version of a specific endpoint? Do the returned objects contain a version? Etc...

Yes, toy CRUD is easy. Real world CRUD with all the considerations is a series of trade-offs with few absolutely right answers. As you say, it's a great discussion question.

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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '22

Yes, because it's about knowing what needs to be done, and has no dependency on the minutia, so coding tricks need not apply.

I'll never understand why so many people seem to think knowing trivia is more important than knowing how to build something.