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I was given a 2-hour coding challenge once to build a language server for a programming editor. It had to implement 3 functions:

1. show help text (type/doc string) for a word

2. go to definition

3. find all references

My first thought was "this is an absurd request for a two hour coding challenge". My second thought was "boy I hit the jackpot, a few years ago on a whim I built my own language server for Go in sublime text and could probably crank out a new one pretty quick"

Sadly despite my best attempt they rejected me. They never did give me an explanation. (fwiw: https://github.com/calebdoxsey/languageserver-challenge)

I wish I could say it was a fluke, but I've been rejected by lots of companies due to the coding challenge. One day I'd really love to see what the passing code for these challenges looked like. Maybe I could learn where I dropped the ball.



FWIW. This is an absolutely awful coding challenge for an interview especially in a 2-hour setting. The challenge requires building off of implementation details for a few very specific technologies. Interviews are supposed to test for general problem solving capabilities within some domain of competence. Unless the job was specifically to work on a go language server, and that was your aforementioned domain of competence, I see no rationale for using this programming challenge to determine employment.




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