Take a General Coding Assessment Again Code Signal
General Coding Ability — A Very Difficult Thing to Assess
How coding assessments attempt to gamify the hiring process
The most popular article on this blog is, of all things, something I wrote about the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit. I like chess, and was particularly attached to it when I was younger. A very popular article by someone named Bonham reads, "Ultralearning turned me from a complete beginner into a top chess player."
The amount of rage I felt when I found out he was a 1221 was unfair, and definitely says more about me than it does about Bonham. His article could be called one about "metalearning" — rather than focus on chess and a number, per se, it focuses on improvement and the rigorous techniques he used to get there. He apparently did not pay for a class; he did not spend years studying the game, or entering tournament after tournament. Instead, he uses Chess as an example of how he used a series of techniques to improve by 400 points in 50 hours.
All I see is the number. This is my bias. If I were to elaborate on this, though, I think that to me the article represents a general trend on the Medium platform — a desire to learn a lot at an incredibly fast pace. This is the kind of hyper-intelligent, "genius mentality" that celebrates the ability to go from an 800 to 1200 player in 50 hours than to go from 1200 to 2000 after years of rigorous study.
Chess is a game, and I am clearly taking it too seriously here. He also compares himself to Elizabeth Harmon, which I think she would be deeply offended by even though she is a fictional character. I might also shout about how the whole premise of The Queen's Gambit is pursuing a passion for the joy of it, instead of for showmanship and demonstrating intellectual prowess, but the truth is that The Queen's Gambit is a fictional TV show about a fictional person that is, like just about any TV show, open to interpretation.
Yeesh, this post is off to a great start.
CodeSignal
Throughout my career and studies, I always wondered if there was some way to get a reliable, general metric of one's programming ability. This ability would not be restricted to programming language — it would adequately capture things like clarity, and one's communication skills, and of course things like how quickly a person could understand a code base, build out new features, and find solutions where necessary. It would account for the ability to build, the ability to debug, and the ability to learn.
CodeSignal is not that, but it certainly tries to be.
Go ahead. Take it right now. CodeSignal is a 4-question, 70-minute coding assessment that assigns a score out of 850. From TechCrunch:
They, along with Sophia Baik, started CodeSignal in 2015 to act as a self-driving interview platform that directly measures skills regardless of a person's background. Like people needing to take a driver's test in order to get a license, Sloyan calls the company's technical assessment technology a "flight simulator for developers," that gives candidates a simulated evaluation of their skills and comes back with a score and highlighted strengths.
— -Source
As far as I have seen, no other testing platform has become quite as popular as CodeSignal…well, for this, anyway. CompTIA comes to mind, offering a wide variety of certifications for things such as Security+ (network security).
In the end, I think CodeSignal basically boils down to another LeetCode or HackerRank…it is doing its best to address a very complex problem in the best way it can. The problem? To see how qualified a software engineer candidate is, you probably have to spend months writing software with them.
Coding as a Game
In LeetCode, users have individual accounts and they attempt to draw you in with points. Solving problems correctly gets you points. Also, you get to see a little green thing that says ACCEPTED.
CodeSignal is even more dramatic. You get to see the entire screen populated by the word CORRECT.
There have been a number of attempts to teach coding with games, and I don't think anyone has ever really cracked it. MineCraft modding might be the best access point, though I do not do that (in spite of my last post).
FreeCodeCamp
I joined a FreeCodeCamp meetup; I was only there for an hour, and it was via Zoom, and it still lifted my spirits after a long week. The premise of the group is to build — you share ideas, you look at what others have made, and you demo. Well, if I have anything to demo in a few weeks, that is.
This was a good reminder of why we started to begin with. Coding involves the completion of complex problems, and by following logical steps, you lay the groundwork for what you hope to create. Presented in this way, though, it had all the benefits of watching people partaking in their hobbies. The projects were interesting and fun, and people were engaged and inspired.
Closing Thoughts
If you want to improve at chess, I do not think there is anything better than Chess.com. It gives you a rank and a percentile. It reviews your games and finds mistakes for you to review. It provides access to articles, tactical exercises, and lines to memorize.
Coding is not so linear. You can choose any project, and it will require a specific set of skills. You can choose a company, but the company (I cringe as I write this sentence) needs to also choose you.
Maybe this makes general coding worse than a game, but it also creates a lot of different ways to define success. It can be the ability to identify the right tool at the right time, or meet the right team with a good vision, or simply positioning yourself so that you connect well with others, and know the significance of each moving piece in your system and how to guide it forward.
If you can also score really well on CodeSignal, more power to you.
lemonsdoormemas1978.blogspot.com
Source: https://betterprogramming.pub/general-coding-ability-a-very-difficult-thing-to-assess-4281ed9f3871
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