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> Some interviewers will ask you to code an implementation of a particular algorithm. Personally, I think that’s just a giant waste of time. It’s far more impor

by dcw303 10y ago

> Some interviewers will ask you to code an implementation of a particular algorithm. Personally, I think that’s just a giant waste of time. It’s far more important to me that you understand which algorithm to apply to which problem. You can always Google the implementation. > It’s not unreasonable to expect that you know the basics of RegEx So that's a fairly arbitrary distinction. Regex has a famously terse syntax. Maybe in some jobs it's used frequently, and in those cases I could expect someone to recall the basics. But it's been my experience that regex comes up just infrequently enough that I never recall the exact expression, and then spend more time googling a regex tutorial (even more if it includes groups or look behind) to refresh myself than I would have if I just had a strings library that just had .StripWhitespace() .Contains() .Startswith() .IsItAValidPhoneNumber etc etc functions.

gedrap 10y ago
Basics of RegEx, in my opinion, is a very subjective thing. Personally, I'd interpret it as 'able to write a simple expression with a few minutes of googling', where simple expression is something like 'up to 5 lower case letters immediately followed by a digit'. It'd would be a reasonable indicator if someone has used them outside tutorials and class rooms in the past year or two. However, you (or anyone else) might have a very different interpretation.
- dcw303 10y ago
  I generally agree with your interpretation, but as the author wrote this later in the piece: > If I give you a challenge to take home, my expectations are even higher. If you get a week to code something with full access to Google, etc… There’s no excuse for giving me a solution that is anything less than top-notch. I saw that as an implication that he expected a candidate to be able to recall regex basics from memory.

by dcw303 10y ago

gedrap 10y ago

Basics of RegEx, in my opinion, is a very subjective thing. Personally, I'd interpret it as 'able to write a simple expression with a few minutes of googling', where simple expression is something like 'up to 5 lower case letters immediately followed by a digit'. It'd would be a reasonable indicator if someone has used them outside tutorials and class rooms in the past year or two. However, you (or anyone else) might have a very different interpretation.

dcw303 10y ago
I generally agree with your interpretation, but as the author wrote this later in the piece: > If I give you a challenge to take home, my expectations are even higher. If you get a week to code something with full access to Google, etc… There’s no excuse for giving me a solution that is anything less than top-notch. I saw that as an implication that he expected a candidate to be able to recall regex basics from memory.