Ask HN: Value in Forcing Whiteboard Coding Interviews?
I&#x27;ve been coding professionally for 10 years and otherwise for over 20 years.  However I know myself, I don&#x27;t do well on whiteboard coding interviews.<p>Because of this, I bring my own laptop to ask if I can code on.  In general as the rooms you could be white board coding on are conference rooms, they almost always (i.e. I have never encountered otherwise) a monitor that one can project one&#x27;s laptop onto.  However, I&#x27;m not always given permission and sometimes am forced to code on a whiteboard.  In practice, my experience is that smaller companies are more willing to allow me to do use my laptop, while the big names are less willing (you can guess who they are)<p>I feel that any company that feels it supports people who are not neurotypical but doesn&#x27;t allow this, is fooling themselves (one might even argue discriminating against a class of people).  I&#x27;m fairly typical, but I have learned about myself that I have a very difficult time organizing my coding thoughts (as opposed to design thought) on a white board.  It&#x27;s the closest I have come to understanding what dyslexic people must experience when they read, I simply don&#x27;t perceive code written out longhand the same way that I perceive code in a fixed width font on my screen.  I write code as I&#x27;d type it on my laptop, but then I get lost, I&#x27;m looking at the code on the whiteboard, but I&#x27;m not processing it.<p>From my perspective, I don&#x27;t see the value of forcing one to code on a whiteboard vs a laptop.  I do see the value in forcing one to do design work on a whiteboard.  In the former case, it bares no similarity to the way almost all engineers work day in and day out, while in the later case it does.<p>Am I missing something?  Is their a particular value that whiteboard coding shows off that coding on a laptop does not?<p>[I realize similar questions have been asked in the past on hacker news, but perhaps my perspective is new]