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One of the problems that I have with this list is some of the stuff I just haven't had to deal with since college, like implementing all those data-structures l

by taude 13y ago

One of the problems that I have with this list is some of the stuff I just haven't had to deal with since college, like implementing all those data-structures like bubble sorts//binary search, linked lists, etc...In 15 years, I've never had to implement one (when I was a C/C++ coder in the '90s, we used 3rd party libraries like Dinkumware). Interviews that ask these type of questions are really skewed at hiring young people just out of school, and favor people who memorize things by rote, not necessarily create/problem solve. Even the author almost admits this by stating he solved problems for two weeks prior to his interviewing...

hackinthebochs 13y ago
If someone gave you the specification of a linked list, binary search, etc, could you code up a mostly correct implementation off the cuff? This is precisely what these types of questions test for. Just having it memorized gives an interviewer very little information. Can they work through a logical problem and code up a solution? This is strong signal for programming ability. I've never memorized any of these algorithms, but I can code them up pretty easily given the specification. If you can do this it doesn't matter how many years you've been out of college.
base698 13y ago
What you're claiming is a straw man of the processes I've personally seen. In most good interviews they ask you something specific to implement, such as how do you implement a code complete feature in an IDE or an event logger. There will be some obvious naive solution that would be slow with any reasonable amount of data. They want to see if you can use the data structures in practical way. The expectation is that if you're smart enough you can reason to a more optimal solution even if you haven't seen a trie in 15 years.
- taude 13y ago
  Agree...maybe I read too much into the listed algorithms, because you're suggesting real-world scenarios where some of these concepts can be applied. But I will say, as never having used a graph search like Dijkstra's in any of my work, the idea of studying this to take a hiring test still goes with my theory of learning something by rote. If someday I need to implement the concept, or use it, I'm sure I'll go figure it out. I had to do this awhile ago with a Levenshtein distance for computing similar string matching. Had someone asked me in an interview, I'd have completely failed at it.

by taude 13y ago

hackinthebochs 13y ago

If someone gave you the specification of a linked list, binary search, etc, could you code up a mostly correct implementation off the cuff? This is precisely what these types of questions test for. Just having it memorized gives an interviewer very little information. Can they work through a logical problem and code up a solution? This is strong signal for programming ability. I've never memorized any of these algorithms, but I can code them up pretty easily given the specification. If you can do this it doesn't matter how many years you've been out of college.

base698 13y ago

What you're claiming is a straw man of the processes I've personally seen. In most good interviews they ask you something specific to implement, such as how do you implement a code complete feature in an IDE or an event logger. There will be some obvious naive solution that would be slow with any reasonable amount of data. They want to see if you can use the data structures in practical way. The expectation is that if you're smart enough you can reason to a more optimal solution even if you haven't seen a trie in 15 years.

taude 13y ago
Agree...maybe I read too much into the listed algorithms, because you're suggesting real-world scenarios where some of these concepts can be applied. But I will say, as never having used a graph search like Dijkstra's in any of my work, the idea of studying this to take a hiring test still goes with my theory of learning something by rote. If someday I need to implement the concept, or use it, I'm sure I'll go figure it out. I had to do this awhile ago with a Levenshtein distance for computing similar string matching. Had someone asked me in an interview, I'd have completely failed at it.