4 ms·
Try hiring and getting flooded by applicants who can hardly implement `min`. It would be a waste of the company's time to bring all those applicants in. So long
by orblivion 11y ago
Try hiring and getting flooded by applicants who can hardly implement `min`. It would be a waste of the company's time to bring all those applicants in. So long as they're not asking for a ton of my time, I don't mind doing a simple screening.
- ape4 11y agoOh that's easy (joke)... int min(int a, int b) { ArrayList<Integer> numbers = new ArrayList<Integer>(); numbers.add(a); numbers.add(b); Collections.sort(numbers); return numbers.get(0); }
- arethuza 11y agoCan I suggest that you write your values to SQL and then use SQL MIN - don't want to reinvent the wheel. Alternatively, maybe you want a big data min with Hadoop? How many things were we working with anyway, are they definitely numbers?
- talideon 11y agoYup. My test for this kind of thing is to ask people to write a function that can sum the numbers between two numbers. It's simple, touches on enough to show if the dev is at least minimally competent, and it's a bonus is they give the O(1) solution. It's surprising how many timewasters even a simple test like that can weed out.
- curryhowardiso 11y agoIf and when people ask me this (exact) question I like to tell them that although I can implement the O(1) solution, I just copied it off of a 14 year old.
- dropit_sphere 11y agoMake sure you ask for the O(1) solution, because if someone's production instincts are to write (fn [l h] (* (dec (- h l)) (/ (+ h l) 2))) whenever they need to sum between two numbers, then I'd argue they're a worse programmer than someone who just writes `(reduce + (range (inc l) h))`. Programmer time is expensive, and linear time is, for 99% of ranges most devs will encounter, just fine.
- talideon 11y agoThat is very much dependent on the circumstances. Besides, this is pre-interview weeding question, and if they give the O(1) answer, that gives use something to talk about in the interview.
- petetnt 11y agoWhy don't you put it up in your job posting? "MinCorp is looking for developers with 5+ years of min-implementing experience. Must haves: - Must be able to implement min in 2 different languages." It would save you tons of trouble, time AND money.
- kitd 11y agoPfft. I just use the 'min' package on NPM.