Coding for Interviews

Learning and science

interview prep newsletter

SHOW HN2012

117points
46comments
#177of 1,677 in 2012
Top 11%of 2012 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

10 positive, 2 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 8 critical, out of 21 comments about the project. Thread score +0.06.

Idea: 6 for, 1 againstDesign: 2 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful resource for interview preparation

    From 3 comments
    • I signed up after reading about this on Reddit. As someone who is looking for a first development job (graduating in May), this is a great resource.
      pendext on HN
    • Glad to find this -- not interviewing right now, but always keeping up on my skillset.
      pfraze on HN
    • Ahh, after I signed up for PyCoder (curtailed Python newsletter every Friday), I thought of doing something similar but tailoring to college students. You beat me to it! Awesome…
      ktran on HN
  • Signup flow well done

    From 1 comment
    • The signup flow was really well done. A minor nitpick: put the social buttons at the bottom of the model after the (see sample -> signup -> congrats) process. I'm excited to get…
      zackzackzack on HN

Objections

  • Email-only delivery is inconvenient; RSS suggested

    From 2 comments
    • You know something that's easy to unsubscribe from? RSS.
      barrkel on HN
    • So.. you basically created a weekly blog consisting of interviewy programming puzzles and the only way I can read it is via email...
      plaguuuuuu on HN
  • Privacy concerns: no terms or privacy policy, emails could be sold

    From 2 comments
    • No Terms of Service or Privacy Policy. I can imagine having a list of email addresses with people interested in getting coding interviews could be interesting to the right people…
      ppierald on HN
    • There being a TOS or Privacy Policy doesn't actually mean a company won't sell your emails. It just means they're going to say they're not going to sell your emails. Harsh, but…
      farmdawgnation on HN
  • Code-writing interview puzzles criticised as poor hiring signals

    From 2 comments
    • I hate code-writing puzzles during interviews. I don't use them at all. Why? Precisely because of methods such as this one where someone might memorize or learn a bunch of…
      robomartin on HN
    • You are setting yourself up for failure using these methods. - You're being misleading by asking them to write a concat method when you really want unit tests for that method.…
      Androsynth on HN

Requests

  • Add RSS or web access to the newsletter

    From 3 comments
    • You know something that's easy to unsubscribe from? RSS.
      barrkel on HN
    • So.. you basically created a weekly blog consisting of interviewy programming puzzles and the only way I can read it is via email...
      plaguuuuuu on HN
    • The confirmation e-mail doesn't have any link back to the website. Hopefully your weekly messages do, it's where most of us will look for a link if we want to share it with others.
      B-Con on HN
  • Fix email plus-tag handling and UI bugs

    From 4 comments
    • Sounds great! Some thoughts: Your email field doesn't support tags http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Address_tags and When entering an address with tags it fails with no…
      piqufoh on HN
    • I signed up and this seems pretty cool. FYI: "Mediocre programmer?" is too long for its container and defaults to "Mediocre programm...". I'm not sure if it's my screen or fonts…
      Permit on HN
    • seems like a very cool idea! i'm exciting to use it and see where it goes. You do have some bugs to work out though, the UI isn't very consistent throughout the site and somehow…
      josh_blum on HN
    • Is the closed area already working? I tried resetting my password and logging in, and got "Invalid email or password."..
      brainstew on HN

Questions

  • Plans to monetize the project

    From 1 comment
    • This is an awesome idea bcjordan! I signed up, I am really excited to get the first email. If this stays CS only, and avoids the pitfalls of 'the industry' this might quickly…
      Sean-Der on HN

Alternatives named

  • CareerCup

    From 3 comments
    • Clevverrr..! Having gone through this whole process recently, I can appreciate how this would have come in handy. FYI: I had used http://www.careercup.com/ extensively.
      nirvanatikku on HN
    • Except for Gayle Laakman's extensive marketing and the heavy user base that followed, I don't see why careercup is popular in the first place. It is a terrible website with ads…
      Jagat on HN
    • um.. I think it's popular because it essentially is like a stackexchange for CS interview questions..... it has a ton of questions, some of which _actually_ popped up during…
      nirvanatikku on HN
  • InterTechTion interview question emails

    From 1 comment
    • I created something similar a few months ago to send out a interview question every other day. The time constraints of maintaining it got to me though (I'm a university student…
      Zaheer on HN
  • PyCoder newsletter

    From 1 comment
    • Ahh, after I signed up for PyCoder (curtailed Python newsletter every Friday), I thought of doing something similar but tailoring to college students. You beat me to it! Awesome…
      ktran on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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