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Asynchronous code

As we’ve seen in previous tasks, one of the main strengths and focuses of the CodeSignal platform is its ability to provide targeted assessment – to zoom right in on a concept without noise or interference in the results. 

In this episode, we’re specifically covering a task related to asynchronous code, an important concept in situations where timing is important. We might use async when dealing with database queries, API calls, or the complicated interaction of the many moving parts within a typical web app. It’s worth noting that all of these can be simulated on CodeSignal, but in this case since we’re trying to assess for the candidate’s ability to write async code, that’s the sole focus of this task.

For some engineering leads, this level of proficiency is all a candidate will need to prove in order to show that they’re qualified. For other jobs, they may be looking for someone with a deeper contextual understanding, in which case this task could be used to screen out unqualified candidates, without wasting anyone’s time on the more complicated follow-up task.

To ensure that the timing of the code is unaffected by external factors (such as processor speed or connection quality), the code is run on a dedicated coderunner server. This is true of all CodeSignal tasks, but it’s of particular importance in this case, since this kind of task relies on strict timing.