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

Re: GAN, we tried including ML in the Core exam, but have actually since removed ML since it wasn't working. We may introduce this as part of an ML specific subject test.

If you want to get involved designing questions, please consider applying to the TSC for next term: https://cspa.io/tsc/apply.

Some of the multiple choice questions are fact-based and just require a Google search -- this is intentional, since proper Googling skills are still needed for the job :)

Problem solving questions are better formatted as open-response essay questions, which we do have.

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).

> Software Engineering is good right now because anyone, absolutely anyone, can dive in.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree! CSPA actually bolsters this because there are no eligibility requirements to take the test. We believe there are a ton of great engineers WITHOUT a college degree and we want to surface them.

We're making it MORE accessible, not less. There's no real barrier to taking the CSPA, except the time commitment. Just register and take it.

We are debating having a Core general exam, and separate per-subject tests, similar to SAT I vs SAT II.

(1) When we retire old exam questions, we will make them available for practice. We're working on creating more study materials! I can't promise anything before April though.

(2) Ah the 440 FE is a typo. We updated the scoring algorithm a few months back and didn't update those examples. Most people try completing all 6 subject sections. It's up to you, but we do discourage optimizing this kind of test taking strategy, and "teaching to the test" ;P

I just started clicking through this and stopped at question 7: "How many bits are in 8 bytes?"

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but this is an ambiguous question. I suspect the "right" answer is the one that assumes 8 bits in an byte, but historically that assumption is not always true, e.g. lots of IETF RFCs refer to "octets" rather than "bytes" to avoid the confusion.

I bring this up not to quibble about historical architectures, but to address another item I recall from my SAT/ACT taking days--getting into the head of the question writer. When I saw this question I thought, "Are they looking for the current/common interpretation, or do they expect me to know mostly useless trivia about the history of the definition of byte?"

Perhaps I'm overthinking it. I probably am. But for that specific question, the answer is "it depends." And based on that, there is no 100% correct answer offered, so I'm left choosing the next best answer, which is probably the one most folks would select anyway.

Was this intentional? Again, it's been a long time since I've taken these types of tests.