Real Dev

Real-life coding skill challenge

#3 Product of the WeekAugust 07, 2019
Real Dev is a platform for developers to prove themselves, capable of REAL technical skills 💪 . We are launching with 10 real-life coding challenges for developers to solve, learn, and have fun.
Would you recommend this product?
3 Reviews5.0/5
Hello ProductHunt! We're really excited to present our latest project - Real Dev. The name kind of speaks for itself - it's a platform for developers to prove and practice real-life coding skills. Why did we build this We've been doing startup for two years after leaving cooperate jobs. Based on our experience, when making hiring decisions, we are a big believer of practical coding skills! Algorithm puzzles and brain teasers are all over the place, and they're wrong! Almost nobody in the dev community is satisfied with the interviewing process, and we hate it especially! Developers are defined by what they can build, not what puzzles they can solve. That's why we build Real Dev, a place with real life coding challenges. - They're extracted from projects and code in production. - Your code will be automatically tested, think of unit/integration tests. - We get a leaderboard too! Going forward We hope that, if we accumulate enough challenges, traction, and more importantly, people here, we could change the industry! So please, be part of it. - If you're a developer, help us by either spreading the word, or adding to our curated challenge list (by talking to us)! - If you're a company, try hiring those people who can actually deliver. You can also talk to us about your special needs and we can help us make a challenge to use for hiring. Trust us, it gives much better signals! We really appreciate your time and feedback! Come on up and show them you're The Real Dev! ⌨️
@shivawu Great product Luke, looking forward to using it! I do have to say that I disagree with the argument that algorithm puzzles are wrong and that most devs don't like them. Being able to truly understand the fundamentals of data structures and algorithms is just the first step into becoming a good software engineer, and a lot of self-taught programmers just don't pay much attention to that. I agree that developers are and should be defined with what they can build, but a company testing knowledge on the fundamentals of the mentioned topics through puzzles and coding problems does exactly that. They want to know how good you are and if you are capable of building the types of applications they are currently working on and recruiting for. Nonetheless, this project is great for helping you build out your portfolio. Congrats on the launch!
@sebastiancrossa Thanks for the kind word! I hear what you say, and I'd say that algorithmic puzzles definitely have its values. We've been doing startup for two years, and recruit quite a few candidates. Since we were from big companies, we tried using those same algorithm tests for our interviews. The result was... mixed. We've seen candidate that does really well in those tests, and fail dramatically when facing projects. We've also seen a few candidates that were really good with their job, and they were all doing well for the small projects we gave them during interview. We think there's a strong co-relation. I would say this definitely applies more to SMB companies, especially startups. We don't have the resource to onboard and train people, and we don't have enough time for recruiting either. So it's a very hard problem. Would love to continue this discussion if you'd like. It's always good to hear more thoughts and experience. Cheers :)
@shivawu I do agree with the statement that training yourself on project-based challenges does prepare you for more real-world applications. Would love to see a hybrid between data structures/algorithm based challenges and what you currently offer.
RealDev is capable of auto-judging all types of backend (Django, node, Ruby, etc.) from frontend (React. etc.) projects. Just simply solve the problem and submit it, we'll test it from our server. As a developer, you can learn by doing! As a hiring manager, you can save tremendous time reading the code and trying to run your candidates' code! Come try it out and talk to us! We're happy to learn your feedback.
@charles_zhaohong_chen Sounds great. Programming is one of those skills where the best way to show what you can do is to show what you have already done.
@payne_at_aaa Yea, agree. The best way to demonstrate what an engineer can do is to show what related projects this engineer has done. We're added projects like Rest API endpoints, Typeahead, etc for engineers to solve. This way hiring managers can best see how this candidate is capable of doing!
There's a lot of good in this concept. I especially like that you guys created a CLI that lets people solve problems on your local, I hadn't seen any algorithm puzzle platform do this previously. I think that is the big get here, tbh. If you did nothing but make another algorithm puzzle site with that CLI, it would be worth it. Makes way more sense to let developers practice problems in their actual IDE instead of in some contrived web interface. I also do think that this type of testing is more relevant than core computer science skills for many companies and developers. The truth is, most of what companies need us to do as developers is do "internet plumbing" or write "glue code" that connects existing libraries and tools together in novel ways. And maybe about 2-3 times a month do I actually need to bust out some novel modified Binary Search Tree structure to solve some scheduling problem with some clever search method I put on each node or whatever... that's the stuff that feels rewarding to write as a dev.. but the business doesn't care. They just care that the scheduling tool works. There's likely a hybrid approach that could be achieved where you could teach developers about useful things like using a BST to solve a scheduling problem or set up a large list to be easily searchable under certain conditions. But instead of dressing it up in stupid word problem or making the prompt cryptic... just tell them that this problem is about implementing a Binary Search Tree to solve a scheduling problem.
@ryancwynar Thanks for the comment! I totally agree on the CLI point. Only when developers are working under their daily environment can they reach full capacity. Anything other than that would change things a lot. And also, most web interface is not very good either way... Testing more practical skills is something we believe in a lot. With tech being developed more and more, core CS techniques become less and less useful to most developers and jobs. I personally wrote recursion only once across one of my 3 years job, never BST. Mostly, as you said, are plumbing, gluing stuff together, debugging, and on a higher level, setting up system architecture, working with all kinds of external services. Those are the things that really matters. What you mentioned about the hybrid approach is interesting. I think our angle will be starting from the practical approach, learn what various needs from companies, or developers about what they write daily. And maybe can come up with some common patterns there. For example, some of the current tasks we have are from old products that we built before. The task Viral Growth asks to implement a user invitation system. There will be cases where certain advanced stuff is needed, like scheduling problem (first thing on my head is Go's thread scheduling algorithm). But they also need to be practical. A lot of systems in production work very differently compared to their theoretical bounds. We're really excited to explore this. Thanks again for your comments. Really insightful!
What's your plan to help companies recruit developers who can solve your challenge? How does it work?
@barbling So the plan is this. Company can provide their own challenge, or use the challenge we provide. The challenge can be used for screening interviews, and company can follow up with the interview to build on top of the challenge during an onsite. The goal is to help company reduce the time spent on interview, and with practical challenges, it can give better signals.
Your product is very cool! What I would add is top charts and liking) My upvote is yours
@realartemg Thank you for your support!