Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#1

Post by mrstefan » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

Which is more valuable for interviewers: having couple of working and deployed projects or be good at doing coding tasks?

I have 3 year programming experience but feel lack of confidence when I think about interview. And I wonder if having couple of projects on Github can replace whiteboard coding.

Re: Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#2

Post by motiw » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

If you can pre-verify the need for your app by getting people to sign up for a mailing list or otherwise, then go for the app, otherwise get a job.

Re: Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#3

Post by sh87 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

If you're young and beginning your career, start with coding practice. As you gain years of experience, the incentive and time you can afford to scruff your way through it keeps declining.

Keep building apps/websites/tools/scripts on the side (after works, weekends, day offs, etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#4

Post by mrstefan » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

motiw wrote: post #2

If you can pre-verify the need for your app by getting people to sign up for a mailing list or otherwise, then go for the app, otherwise get a job.

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear.

I mean: Which is more valuable for interviewers: having couple of working and deployed projects or be good at doing coding tasks? (I have 3 year programming experience)

Re: Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#5

Post by sh87 » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

mrstefan wrote: post #4

motiw wrote: post #2

If you can pre-verify the need for your app by getting people to sign up for a mailing list or otherwise, then go for the app, otherwise get a job.

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I mean: Which is more valuable for interviewers: having couple of working and deployed projects or be good at doing coding tasks? (I have 3 year programming experience)

At top companies, there's very little chance you are getting through without being convincingly good at CS heavy topics (DataStructures, efficient algorithms, etc.)

Case in point: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en

Re: Ask HN: Should I focus on building apps or practicing coding tasks to get a job?

#6

Post by daviddever23box » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 9:36 PM UTC

Problem solving is a pretty important skill; very few whiteboard interviews address the day-to-day issues you'll see in a large production environment. Task organization is an extremely close second.

Get yourself a (public) cloud account of some sort (AWS, Azure, Google, etc.) and work on having some functional infrastructure (containers, DNS, applications, content delivery) along with the requisite monitoring and security.

Anything you do from that point should live atop that infrastructure, with the same expectations that a prospective employer might have when working on a production team (DevOps, pure dev, pure ops, whatever).