   Is this job pre-test just plain ridiculous, or is it me?
  I'm currently applying to all sorts of game companies for jobs at the moment, and have been given a pre-test in Java for one of them (I won't name names!). It seems like fairly standard stuff - three questions all on the same thing, getting slightly harder. They're all just A* search basically, which I could do pretty easily.The thing that's rather annoying though, is that they insist on not using any of Java's standard library, meaning I'll have to write my own priority queue and so on. The reason is that Sun's classes are slow and poorly optimised, and they expect me to do better. What?!Am I just being stupid, or is this a really bad excuse for getting me to spend hours and hours of my time doing monkey work? I'm not sure I should even bother, to be honest!   
  That is stupid. For a test I'd be quite happy with being told not to use libs so they could see your understanding of important data structures, but if they really  think the built in stuff is no good they are idiots, the kind who make it to www.worsethanfailure.com.The only exception might be if this is a non-mainstream platform. Can you give more details - it's not J2ME I take it (because that is a bit lame).   ;Quote:Original post by hymermanThe thing that's rather annoying though, is that they insist on not using any of Java's standard library, meaning I'll have to write my own priority queue and so on. The reason is that Sun's classes are slow and poorly optimised, and they expect me to do better. What?!Well, that's the reason they give. The real reason, of course, is to see how well you do at reimplementing them. It's busy work, no doubt. But according to HR people I know, the tests are good at weeding out a lot of the wannabes. As for whether you should bother, the question of your future career does seem worth spending an extra couple of hours on.   ;  A lot of jobs have pretty menial tests. For my current game designer job, I had to write a design proposal for releasing the game Zuma! on the DS. That wasn't exactly what I would call fun and certainly took more than a few hours to do, but in the end it wound up letting me get the job!I'll back up what Sneftel said. If you really want the job then you'll do it.   ;  The best part about programming tests is that occasionally the HR people administer them from some bank of "example programming tests" they got from some seminar somewhere.I did an interview with one set of people who were convinced that my answer was wrong because I used pseudocode instead of whatever their answer was written in (they refused to show me). [rolleyes] No developers in sight.I think they posted a massive loss this year and got scooped up by one of the larger agile shops in town.   ;  To tell you the truth guys, I don't think HR people really know what they are doing. I mean, have you seen the job requirements listings? I remember looking for programming internships back in 2003 and finding requirements lists asking for "5 years of experience in C# and .NET". Excuse me? Did I invent a time machine or something?   ;  On some platforms (*cough*PS2*cough*) the C++ STL is actually generally unusable for performance and stability reasons (i.e. compilers for the platform can't handle templates).   ;Quote:Original post by capn_midnightI mean, have you seen the job requirements listings? I remember looking for programming internships back in 2003 and finding requirements lists asking for "5 years of experience in C# and .NET". Excuse me? Did I invent a time machine or something?Asking for that sort of thing has been around since the dawn of time -- I remember reading job ads for people with 10 years of experience in Java in late 1997, and I've seen old want ads asking for people with 10 years of Mac development experience in 1988. Of course HR people don't know what they're doing. Developer quality varies greatly and is often difficult to discern. That's why any decent firm will just route the programming stuff to the programming managers, who handle the interviews and the like.It's the places that give you an interview with only the HR people that I've found are incompetent.   ;Quote:Original post by superpigOn some platforms (*cough*PS2*cough*) the C++ STL is actually generally unusable for performance and stability reasons (i.e. compilers for the platform can't handle templates).... and sometimes the console compilers might take a little while to catch up and correctly implement the less used parts of the standard properly too..   ;  It's just to weed out people applying for the job. If you really want it, you will do the monkey work. It's not the worst idea TBH, but the reason being slow libraries is rather retarded...   