That's bad interviewing, not bad practice. Get rid of the guessing. Make sure you explain to the candidate exactly what you're looking for.
I use whiteboard coding .. and it's not to catch you out on semi colons. I even tell my candidates that they can use any language they want or even mix them together or make up their own.
What I want to see on the whiteboard is a logical, working solution to a simple problem. And if your brain freezes up because it's an "interview", I'm going to push you in the right direction.
Once you have an initial working solution, we're going to chat about how it works. If there are cases where it would fail. What assumptions we've made about input. Maybe we'll (both) even jump over to another whiteboard and write a new version based on our discussion. (Do your eyes light up when we've found a cool optimization??)
The only language caveat I use: you can't have a call a function called doitforme()
(If you or anyone you know is looking for a senior PHP job in Melbourne.AU, I'm hiring. Hit me up and I'll send you to the ad on Seek)
I use whiteboard coding .. and it's not to catch you out on semi colons. I even tell my candidates that they can use any language they want or even mix them together or make up their own.
What I want to see on the whiteboard is a logical, working solution to a simple problem. And if your brain freezes up because it's an "interview", I'm going to push you in the right direction.
Once you have an initial working solution, we're going to chat about how it works. If there are cases where it would fail. What assumptions we've made about input. Maybe we'll (both) even jump over to another whiteboard and write a new version based on our discussion. (Do your eyes light up when we've found a cool optimization??)
The only language caveat I use: you can't have a call a function called doitforme()
(If you or anyone you know is looking for a senior PHP job in Melbourne.AU, I'm hiring. Hit me up and I'll send you to the ad on Seek)