Oh geez, I’m one of those people who can’t code on paper. I was applying for something ages ago and I went in for a programming test and they handed me a paper test and my mind completely shut down. Put me in front a computer and I have no issues at all… It was embarrassing.
I would just write down the steps I would take, just some psudocode. It doesn’t have to work, it just has to make sense in the style of the language you’re talking about.
import random library
import any GUI/display libraries required for the outcome desired
build array of integers [1..52] (or 0..51 if you're being fancy)
for loop 1..1000
select random number A 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above)
select random number B 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above)
swap elements in the array A and B
pop first two elements from array
decode at display time what the two numbers represent in terms of playing cards
If the test requires more than that, then they’re crazy. The syntax doesn’t matter, just that you can logic yourself through the problem.
You can use the IDE, google, or whatever to fill in the specifics. If you wanted me to do that in literally any programming language, once the psudocode is done, you just spend an hour or so looking up the details.
If you wanted me to do that in literally any programming language, once the psudocode is done, you just spend an hour or so looking up the details.
In some cases, you can even use an AI chatbot as a “pseudocode compiler”. Just tell it to translate your pseudocode to an actual language. I’ve done it for shell scripts a couple of times, works surprisingly well. Not that I would do this at a job interview haha.
Even the odd numbers stuff? I think interviewers account for nerves and being outside an IDE. You might draw a blank but would you be would be randomly adding things like these did?
No this was just crazy, I have worked with people like that though where stackoverflow was permanently on a second monitor, and I wondered how they made it through the interview process
for some reason I still needed to know programming on paper so much so that at the university, in class prgramming we had to do the exam on paper. every time. no matter if it was Java or C++…
I strangely enjoyed it, but it still was kinda weird.
In university I written on papers programs in pure C. They did compile. They even worked. But they were school olympiad-level, so it doesn’t count I guess.
Oh geez, I’m one of those people who can’t code on paper. I was applying for something ages ago and I went in for a programming test and they handed me a paper test and my mind completely shut down. Put me in front a computer and I have no issues at all… It was embarrassing.
I would just write down the steps I would take, just some psudocode. It doesn’t have to work, it just has to make sense in the style of the language you’re talking about.
import random library import any GUI/display libraries required for the outcome desired build array of integers [1..52] (or 0..51 if you're being fancy) for loop 1..1000 select random number A 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above) select random number B 1..52 (or 0..51 if you used that above) swap elements in the array A and B pop first two elements from array decode at display time what the two numbers represent in terms of playing cardsIf the test requires more than that, then they’re crazy. The syntax doesn’t matter, just that you can logic yourself through the problem.
You can use the IDE, google, or whatever to fill in the specifics. If you wanted me to do that in literally any programming language, once the psudocode is done, you just spend an hour or so looking up the details.
In some cases, you can even use an AI chatbot as a “pseudocode compiler”. Just tell it to translate your pseudocode to an actual language. I’ve done it for shell scripts a couple of times, works surprisingly well. Not that I would do this at a job interview haha.
Even the odd numbers stuff? I think interviewers account for nerves and being outside an IDE. You might draw a blank but would you be would be randomly adding things like these did?
No this was just crazy, I have worked with people like that though where stackoverflow was permanently on a second monitor, and I wondered how they made it through the interview process
for some reason I still needed to know programming on paper so much so that at the university, in class prgramming we had to do the exam on paper. every time. no matter if it was Java or C++…
I strangely enjoyed it, but it still was kinda weird.
In university I written on papers programs in pure C. They did compile. They even worked. But they were school olympiad-level, so it doesn’t count I guess.
Oh, and I was supposed to write in Python.
I lucked out, my university was digital before that was a thing. So the amount of written exams was minor enough that I pulled through ok
Yeah, I really liked my prof for some of the programming courses, but also damn him for making us write code on paper in the exams