The interviewer is asking for my preference before hand. I have personally done both type of interviews but not sure if one is better over the other?
My personal preference would be both. Explain ideas on whiteboard and code on laptop. Very efficient.
On laptop easy to type. But have to get all syntax and everything right. Has to be flawless On whiteboard harder to write but a little syntax error can be overlooked. You decide.
They usually want full syntax on whiteboard from what I’ve experienced.
Good interviewer shouldn’t care about a missing semi colon. And shouldn’t care if u do array.length or lenght() or size() But u r right. U should always ask.
Whiteboard. You will waste time setting up laptop. I once had to make diagrams on a laptop with a broken touch pad doing ASCII art in a text editor.
Way better to type code on the laptop: easy to copy and paste and move code around, especially when asked a follow-up question. At the same time, it is much better to tackle system design problems in the whiteboard: it is faster to illustrate your ideas and lead the discussion.
Depends on whether the interviewer is as good as a compiler