I think "design a solution" can be as simple as having a rough idea of what the implementation looks like. This is solid advice.
But the journey is part of the magic. Anyone expecting candidates to produce perfect code is doing it wrong. HackerRank is garbage.
I want to understand how you think. I want you to communicate and ask questions. Yes, it can challenging to ve without your tools, with only a whiteboard, but that's okay.
If I'm interviewing you and you make a typo, great! I don't care. Maybe I'll point it out to you, but I probably won't, and I certainly won't dock you for it. And yeah, you can debug. I often encourage candidates to walk through their code with sample input, which I usually want them to come up with too.
This demonstrates an understanding of how your software works. I don't actually care if it compiles. I don't care if you're a wizard in emacs or can type a million words a minute.
I also don't care if your solution is optimal. In the real world they rarely are. But, I want to talk to you about ways we could optimize it, and maybe I'll ask you to show me what you mean.
Ultimately I want you to explain stuff to me, talk technical, and display your train of thought.
Trial-and-error is fine. It's a tool, and there are no silver bullets.
But the journey is part of the magic. Anyone expecting candidates to produce perfect code is doing it wrong. HackerRank is garbage.
I want to understand how you think. I want you to communicate and ask questions. Yes, it can challenging to ve without your tools, with only a whiteboard, but that's okay.
If I'm interviewing you and you make a typo, great! I don't care. Maybe I'll point it out to you, but I probably won't, and I certainly won't dock you for it. And yeah, you can debug. I often encourage candidates to walk through their code with sample input, which I usually want them to come up with too.
This demonstrates an understanding of how your software works. I don't actually care if it compiles. I don't care if you're a wizard in emacs or can type a million words a minute.
I also don't care if your solution is optimal. In the real world they rarely are. But, I want to talk to you about ways we could optimize it, and maybe I'll ask you to show me what you mean.
Ultimately I want you to explain stuff to me, talk technical, and display your train of thought.
Trial-and-error is fine. It's a tool, and there are no silver bullets.