3 ms·
I have never heard of the negative base question (I would have never passed that without help): https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216800/how-i-convert-de
by leetrout 2y ago
I have never heard of the negative base question (I would have never passed that without help): https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216800/how-i-convert-decimal-using-negetive-base-2 https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/216800/how-i-conver...
My worst interview questions that were silly:
• number theory for django dev: how many prime numbers are there.
• random brain teaser for django dev: infinite lasers pointed in space that turn at each other at the rotational speed of light- does the intersection travel faster than the speed of light
And questions that were very fair that I bombed:
• ms paint fill method on whiteboard. I think I checked diagonals when I wasnt supposed to - i cant remember but they were not happy with my answer.
• for a given phone number and a US dialpad what are all the possible letter combinations for the number? In python this is just the built in cartesian product. But I still struggle to write it from scratch with a recursive function and getting the accumulation correct.
- htrp 2y ago> I have never heard of the negative base question In what real world situation would you even use a new base system? Seti and Aliens are the only one that comes to mind, encode a new numerical system based on some fundamental physical constant like the atomic weight of hydrogen.
- henryfjordan 2y agoI mean we use base-10 and base-2 both all the time. I'm using base-2 to talk to you over the internet right now! > Seti and Aliens are the only one that comes to mind, encode a new numerical system based on some fundamental physical constant like the atomic weight of hydrogen. That's base-1, aka counting
- relaxing 2y agoThe paint fill one is funny because the answer they’re probably looking for (demonstrate you’re comfortable with recursion) is actually the naive answer (blows up in practice.)
- Paul-Craft 2y agoYour last example reminds me of a particularly absurd one years ago. I got asked to write a function that calculates all the subsets of a given set. The problem wasn't the question, though. It was that the person asking me this didn't even know what "yield" was in Python.
- dmoy 2y ago> I got asked to write a function that calculates all the subsets of a given set. I very much dislike the interview questions which roughly translate to "do you know combinatorics/<insert-some-other-area-of-math>?". Even back when I was personally good at those questions (straight out of University), they were less interesting interview questions. I'm sure there's some jobs where it's relevant, but for the vast majority of software jobs... not so much. I get why it's done - they can be small, self-contained problems, which don't require a lot of external context. And they can be easier to come up with. > The problem wasn't the question, though. It was that the person asking me this didn't even know what "yield" was in Python. That is a problem too. As an interviewer, I'm okay with someone using a language or lang feature I don't know, so long as they can explain it. Some interviewers are much less flexible. Hell, sometimes I'll feign ignorance over some lang feature just to see what their explanation is like, because it's a measure of signal on how well they can teach a feature to a more junior dev.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThere's a rotational speed of light? Does it mean anything for light to rotate?
- leetrout 2y agoSee, I can't even explain it back correctly. Kinda like this https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3vnyty/if_i_swing_a_laser_pointer_really_fast_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3vnyty/if_i_swi...