Ugh, why am I so bad a timed coding tests? I swear I’m a productive coder at my jobs, but something about trying to solve puzzles under a short timer gets me all flustered.
I used to be … just OK at competitions, never particularly good. I was VERY good at interview-style questions, both puzzle and just “implement this mildly-difficult thing”. I’m less good now, and probably couldn’t finish most competition-style problems.
My personality is fairly focused, and pretty low neuroticism, so I rarely get flustered in the moment (I can be very nervous before and after), so I don’t have any advice on that dimension. In terms of speed, the motto of many precision speed tasks is “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. When practicing, use a timer and focus on fluidity before perfection. Take your time (but measure) when first practicing a new thing, and only add time limits/goals once the approach is baked into your mind. How quickly can you identify the correct data structures and algorithms you’ll use, without a single line of real code (often a few lines of pseudocode)? How long to implement common algorithms (Heapify, Dijkstra’s, various graph and searching, etc.)? Given a plan and an algorithm you’ve done before, how long to get correct code?
After two weeks of intense practicing of relatively easy coding problems under harsh time constraints, I did get noticeably better. I was given a chance to retake the coding test for the company I was applying to, and got a much better score.
It is just practice. Initially when I started I was very bad at it, and then I got into competitive programming, and started noticing patterns in questions and was easily able to write solutions to hard problems effortlessly. It has nothing to do with your programming skills, its just like any other sport or skill, practice is all you need.
Ugh, why am I so bad a timed coding tests? I swear I’m a productive coder at my jobs, but something about trying to solve puzzles under a short timer gets me all flustered.
I used to be … just OK at competitions, never particularly good. I was VERY good at interview-style questions, both puzzle and just “implement this mildly-difficult thing”. I’m less good now, and probably couldn’t finish most competition-style problems.
My personality is fairly focused, and pretty low neuroticism, so I rarely get flustered in the moment (I can be very nervous before and after), so I don’t have any advice on that dimension. In terms of speed, the motto of many precision speed tasks is “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. When practicing, use a timer and focus on fluidity before perfection. Take your time (but measure) when first practicing a new thing, and only add time limits/goals once the approach is baked into your mind. How quickly can you identify the correct data structures and algorithms you’ll use, without a single line of real code (often a few lines of pseudocode)? How long to implement common algorithms (Heapify, Dijkstra’s, various graph and searching, etc.)? Given a plan and an algorithm you’ve done before, how long to get correct code?
After two weeks of intense practicing of relatively easy coding problems under harsh time constraints, I did get noticeably better. I was given a chance to retake the coding test for the company I was applying to, and got a much better score.
Thanks for the encouragement.
It is just practice. Initially when I started I was very bad at it, and then I got into competitive programming, and started noticing patterns in questions and was easily able to write solutions to hard problems effortlessly. It has nothing to do with your programming skills, its just like any other sport or skill, practice is all you need.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uPi2YppTEnzKG3nXD/nathan-helm-burger-s-shortform?commentId=MfneguFXwWtwjgHzr