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Faster Coding Interview Prep Using Interactive Visualizations

168 points by fahimulhaq 9y ago

adwhit 9y ago
Wonder if this got to the top of the front page because it looks like "Code Rust". It has nothing to do with Rust, of course.
- oldsj 9y ago
  Yea how are you going to put Rust in your product name and not even include it!
  - dominotw 9y ago
    I read it as 'get the rust off of your algorithm coding'
- anocendi 9y ago
  Trait of this title is plain wrong.
coldcode 9y ago
Perhaps the next thing will be AI driven coding interview robots. Why bother with people when you can optimize the whole process without human intervention? Call it Being Interviewed As A Service.
- moron4hire 9y ago
  "We put the extra A in BIAAS"
- vtange 9y ago
  Heck, it might be easier to train an AI for the task of passing coding interviews as opposed to you know, actually replacing real software engineers at their jobs.
jfyne 9y ago
Windows user here. .mediumTextViewer class has a overflow-x: scroll on it which makes everything look like this: https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png Switch it to auto and it will look a lot cleaner. Otherwise cool site
- _nh_ 9y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. I'm the co-founder of Educative where this course is hosted. We'll fix it.
ryanong 9y ago
I always hated algorithm interviews when it came to applying for web development jobs. I've been a developer for 8 years now and I have only had to use any algorithms once in my career. I get it that for facebook, google, and what not these could be representative of the work you do but I don't think this is a good interview. I tend to look for developers now that have a better sense of modeling and api design. One interview that works really well is modeling a chat app and going through all the edge cases. Also a fan of Rob's Pairing Interview that is executed by pivotal. Build an array or perhaps a set from scratch and pair on building it where the interviewer is a driver and the interviewee as the navigator.
- dominotw 9y ago
  you are right. But the fact of our industry is there is no way around these interviews. You have to do them.
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    This is not true. You have to do them if you don’t have much experience, i.e. straight out of college. With no experience, these stand in for an understanding of your CS understanding. Organizations that put very experienced candidates through algorithms questions show that they don’t value experience, and I wouldn’t want to work there. With a large amount of experience, we as interviews, should be asking much more about past projects and issues people have run into. I find it much more valuable to understand what real world problems people have faced, and how they solved them. Sometimes you even get to a point where someone actually has a good story about using the wrong algorithm, and so you still get to talk about algorithms. This tends to also tell you a lot about the candidate’s abilities to work in the environment you are thinking of placing them into. Algorithms questions should be a fallback only when you can’t discover this while running through questions about their experiences.
    - koblas 9y ago
      Fresh out or not, a good interview process will involve technical problems. Some organizations will bias to "take home" style, others will do a whiteboard session either on a whiteboard or with a computer. Good questions are going to be more than, build a linked list in JavaScript or a bubble sort. Those are pure algorithmic questions, but you still need to walk the walk not just talk the talk.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kafkaesq 9y ago
Engineers have used Coderust to crack the coding interviews at Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Uber, Dropbox, Lyft, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Zenefits, Pinterest, eBay, Twitter, Cloudera, Salesforce, Tableau and many others. If one can "crack" these interviews by spending a couple of hours on some interactive tool... then shouldn't that be an indication to those conducting these kinds of interviews that, fundamentally speaking, they might not be all that useful in the first place? And not only that - but perhaps counterproductive? In that they explicitly reward not the thoughtful, disciplined engineers you want to hire -- but the drudges and go-getters who think, "Gots to get me into a top company - just tell me what I gotta do to pass the test!" Shouldn't it now?
- ex_amazon_sde 9y ago
  Thankfully, people don't "crack" Amazon interviews for SDE/SE roles with Coderust or simply memorizing mergesort.
  - nerpderp83 9y ago
    Interviews have more to do with signaling than actual ability to do the job, in all the dimensions that are necessary. Doing well on CS puzzles is and probably still be required for a long time to come. More of a hazing ritual. What I think should be allowed is for the interviewee to pose the same kind of ridiculous question to the interviewer, if the interviewer fails, the candidate takes their job.
  - latencyloser 9y ago
    This doesn't align with my experience. I just interviewed with Amazon a few days ago, just testing the waters to see what's going on in the rest of the world, and it was very 'leetcode'-ish. So much so that I ended up just telling the recruiter I wasn't interested in the position anymore. One question more or less required me to code up a BST from scratch and traverse it. I felt like I was back in my undergraduate algorithms class. If I ever really needed another job, I guess I'd have to suck it up and refresh myself on that stuff. That's a shame.
shadykiller 9y ago
Can anyone suggest if this is good and worth the money ? I'm planning interviews at top 5 next year.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  https://www.pramp.com/#/ https://www.pramp.com/#/ the ridiculous problems are about 1/3 of it. Interacting and thinking under pressure are the other 2/3. Best to practice exactly how one would perform.
zengid 9y ago
Is the industry staying focused on algorithms written in imperative Object Oriented languages for interview quizzes, or has anyone seen more functional styles being used? I know Facebook does a lot with OCaml so I wonder if they are strict about requiring proficiency in OOP patterns, or if it depends on what you put on your resume.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Is HN now allowing advertisements for services to be on the front page now?

168 points by fahimulhaq 9y ago

Wonder if this got to the top of the front page because it looks like "Code Rust". It has nothing to do with Rust, of course.

oldsj 9y ago
Yea how are you going to put Rust in your product name and not even include it!
- dominotw 9y ago
  I read it as 'get the rust off of your algorithm coding'
anocendi 9y ago
Trait of this title is plain wrong.

coldcode 9y ago

Perhaps the next thing will be AI driven coding interview robots. Why bother with people when you can optimize the whole process without human intervention? Call it Being Interviewed As A Service.

moron4hire 9y ago
"We put the extra A in BIAAS"
vtange 9y ago
Heck, it might be easier to train an AI for the task of passing coding interviews as opposed to you know, actually replacing real software engineers at their jobs.

jfyne 9y ago

Windows user here. .mediumTextViewer class has a overflow-x: scroll on it which makes everything look like this: https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png https://i.imgur.com/kE2ElEv.png Switch it to auto and it will look a lot cleaner. Otherwise cool site

_nh_ 9y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm the co-founder of Educative where this course is hosted. We'll fix it.

ryanong 9y ago

I always hated algorithm interviews when it came to applying for web development jobs. I've been a developer for 8 years now and I have only had to use any algorithms once in my career. I get it that for facebook, google, and what not these could be representative of the work you do but I don't think this is a good interview. I tend to look for developers now that have a better sense of modeling and api design. One interview that works really well is modeling a chat app and going through all the edge cases. Also a fan of Rob's Pairing Interview that is executed by pivotal. Build an array or perhaps a set from scratch and pair on building it where the interviewer is a driver and the interviewee as the navigator.

dominotw 9y ago
you are right. But the fact of our industry is there is no way around these interviews. You have to do them.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  This is not true. You have to do them if you don’t have much experience, i.e. straight out of college. With no experience, these stand in for an understanding of your CS understanding. Organizations that put very experienced candidates through algorithms questions show that they don’t value experience, and I wouldn’t want to work there. With a large amount of experience, we as interviews, should be asking much more about past projects and issues people have run into. I find it much more valuable to understand what real world problems people have faced, and how they solved them. Sometimes you even get to a point where someone actually has a good story about using the wrong algorithm, and so you still get to talk about algorithms. This tends to also tell you a lot about the candidate’s abilities to work in the environment you are thinking of placing them into. Algorithms questions should be a fallback only when you can’t discover this while running through questions about their experiences.
  - koblas 9y ago
    Fresh out or not, a good interview process will involve technical problems. Some organizations will bias to "take home" style, others will do a whiteboard session either on a whiteboard or with a computer. Good questions are going to be more than, build a linked list in JavaScript or a bubble sort. Those are pure algorithmic questions, but you still need to walk the walk not just talk the talk.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kafkaesq 9y ago

Engineers have used Coderust to crack the coding interviews at Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Uber, Dropbox, Lyft, Facebook, Microsoft, Netflix, Zenefits, Pinterest, eBay, Twitter, Cloudera, Salesforce, Tableau and many others. If one can "crack" these interviews by spending a couple of hours on some interactive tool... then shouldn't that be an indication to those conducting these kinds of interviews that, fundamentally speaking, they might not be all that useful in the first place? And not only that - but perhaps counterproductive? In that they explicitly reward not the thoughtful, disciplined engineers you want to hire -- but the drudges and go-getters who think, "Gots to get me into a top company - just tell me what I gotta do to pass the test!" Shouldn't it now?

ex_amazon_sde 9y ago
Thankfully, people don't "crack" Amazon interviews for SDE/SE roles with Coderust or simply memorizing mergesort.
- nerpderp83 9y ago
  Interviews have more to do with signaling than actual ability to do the job, in all the dimensions that are necessary. Doing well on CS puzzles is and probably still be required for a long time to come. More of a hazing ritual. What I think should be allowed is for the interviewee to pose the same kind of ridiculous question to the interviewer, if the interviewer fails, the candidate takes their job.
- latencyloser 9y ago
  This doesn't align with my experience. I just interviewed with Amazon a few days ago, just testing the waters to see what's going on in the rest of the world, and it was very 'leetcode'-ish. So much so that I ended up just telling the recruiter I wasn't interested in the position anymore. One question more or less required me to code up a BST from scratch and traverse it. I felt like I was back in my undergraduate algorithms class. If I ever really needed another job, I guess I'd have to suck it up and refresh myself on that stuff. That's a shame.

shadykiller 9y ago

Can anyone suggest if this is good and worth the money ? I'm planning interviews at top 5 next year.

nerpderp83 9y ago
https://www.pramp.com/#/ https://www.pramp.com/#/ the ridiculous problems are about 1/3 of it. Interacting and thinking under pressure are the other 2/3. Best to practice exactly how one would perform.

zengid 9y ago

Is the industry staying focused on algorithms written in imperative Object Oriented languages for interview quizzes, or has anyone seen more functional styles being used? I know Facebook does a lot with OCaml so I wonder if they are strict about requiring proficiency in OOP patterns, or if it depends on what you put on your resume.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Is HN now allowing advertisements for services to be on the front page now?