2 ms·

In my job: * I always have access to a decent stdlib and would not need to implement sort itself * But I do need to design and implement bespoke algorithms T

In my job: * I always have access to a decent stdlib and would not need to implement sort itself * But I do need to design and implement bespoke algorithms The algorithms are nothing groundbreaking - they're things like how to grow and shrink a buffer when reading from a socket. But I'd struggle if I didn't know a few examples of different algorithms and how to think about their trade offs, and basic sorting algorithms (not like this article!) are ideal for that. Maybe I'm doing unusual work but it doesn't really feel like it. Edit: To put it another way: in a past job, we had some unfortunate examples of people being hired whose ability to work with algorithms was sadly not up to scratch, and it had a serious practical impact on their ability to do their job. If they had been asked a few questions about sorting algorithms in their interview then that could have been avoided.

jsmeaton 5y ago
Then would a better interview technique be something like - here is a spec for an algorithm. Now implement it. I see very little value in having people studying algorithm implementations for interviews. Of course, knowing about specific algorithms is handy, and adjusting the question to find an appropriate spec to implement for a given problem could be a nice touch. I think that either approach above is strictly better than implementing algorithms from memory and would produce a far better signal.
pas 5y ago
I think algorithmization is a must for programming. (Like you said, transforming/filtering data, results, structures, etc.) No questions about that. But grilling candidates for hours about it seems "a bit" excessive. (Which is again qualitatively different from asking someone to write a few lines of pseudocode/python/whatever-they-want to map/reduce something or ask them how they would implement a calculator, a few pointed questions about knowing the basics, etc.)

jsmeaton 5y ago

Then would a better interview technique be something like - here is a spec for an algorithm. Now implement it. I see very little value in having people studying algorithm implementations for interviews. Of course, knowing about specific algorithms is handy, and adjusting the question to find an appropriate spec to implement for a given problem could be a nice touch. I think that either approach above is strictly better than implementing algorithms from memory and would produce a far better signal.

pas 5y ago

I think algorithmization is a must for programming. (Like you said, transforming/filtering data, results, structures, etc.) No questions about that. But grilling candidates for hours about it seems "a bit" excessive. (Which is again qualitatively different from asking someone to write a few lines of pseudocode/python/whatever-they-want to map/reduce something or ask them how they would implement a calculator, a few pointed questions about knowing the basics, etc.)