Re: hash table. I've been asking candidates to basically implement HashMap (for java positions) (without simply using Hashtable). It's an ongoing experiment. Al

Re: hash table. I've been asking candidates to basically implement HashMap (for java positions) (without simply using Hashtable). It's an ongoing experiment. Although I've been told that this is a common question, I've actually never seen anyone do very well at it, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it gets at some important java concepts: hashCode() and equals() and the relationship between them. Depending on how they go about it, you can also get into issues of runtime complexity, memory/speed tradeoffs, etc... It's a deep question that offers a lot of room for exploration. On the other hand, as mentioned, people usually do fairly poorly at it, and so my fear is that it's simply too difficult. I mean, I'd even be satisfied with solutions storing key/value pairs in a list -- inefficient, but workable -- but it's fairly rare that folks even get that close.