Launch HN: CSPA (YC S18) – SAT for Software Engineers

Thanks for the LAUNCHHN voucher code. I'd seen cspa.io on hackernews previously but the free voucher code was the motivation I needed to register for the core exam in April! I'm a uk-based maths grad previously in a datasci role, currently taking some time off to self-study computer sci and frontend/backend. Looking forward to checking my progress against the test!

Quick bits of feedback in case they're helpful:

(1) I'd love there to be a second practise/past paper available (there's only one currently right?). Ideally I'd like to go through one now to check where my knowledge gaps are... then take one a couple of weeks before the exam in April.

(2) I just gave this only a very quick read... and found it a bit unclear: https://cspa.io/scoring. I'm sure I could understand it no problem with a more serious read-through... but thought I'd feed that back anyway. [Specifically it's not clear in the examples section how the score of 440 in FE is achieved, as the max mentioned is 400. Also the 6 subject scores all differ... but then presumably are scaled to 400 points. Is that right? With my quick read through I'm not yet clear if in the exam I should try to complete all 6 or just complete 1 of the 6 subject areas. I guess as final score takes your best score out of the 6 you could just complete one or two. What do most candidates do in practice? Perhaps you could add some guidance on this to the site somewhere if it's not there already.]

Regards. Mike.

This also pushed the onus on candidate selection even further on to the candidate, when it's clearly a lack of trust from employers that you are capable of what you put on your CV. Testing that should be the burden of the employer, not the employee.

One key difference between software engineering and other engineering disciplines is that there are many more ways to solve most problems, many more problems to solve, and an endless number of customizations. At a concrete level what does the canonical "web app" look like? We can say "3 tier architecture" but that's abstract -- which technologies should you pick? When should you pick ruby over python? What about when you should pick a document store of a relational database (OK that ones kinda easy) -- these are the questions that good engineers can answer and refute -- there's usually not an absolutely right answer, either.

I personally also feel the same way about the CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) -- hire someone with a CKA and sure that means they know the Kubernetes basics/internals (as it stood whenever they took the test), but does that mean they keep up? Experiment with new tech/RFCs/features (so your company doesn't have to with the product on the line)? Can they choose not to use Kubernetes when it's not necessary?

Rather than just building good, multi-layered interview questions with subtly random parts and lots of room for interpretation (to see how they interpret and think about the problem), we just pick these solutions that are somewhat broken from yesteryear (see: it/sysadmin/networking certs).

One question based on your responses in this thread: is this test intended to measure software engineering ability or computer science knowledge?

EDIT - one more question after looking through the grading: do you see people studying for specific roles, or the entire test? While I think the latter is possible, it seems much less feasible than studying for, say, the entire SAT.

I'm only making these comments because I don't want this to fail.