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>>student may have thought he’d understood it at the time, and perhaps he did, but he’d never practiced using the concept to truly internalize it. I'm changing
by kamaal 12y ago
>>student may have thought he’d understood it at the time, and perhaps he did, but he’d never practiced using the concept to truly internalize it.
I'm changing jobs and I've interviewed at quite a few places off late. Having faced with so many Algorithm and Data Structure questions, I took it upon myself to read upon a good deal of material before I started interviewing. So I did the usual approach one takes while studying math, understand all the basic concepts and look for places where you could apply them, rather than studying individual problems.
Recently I interviewed at one place, where I guess a guy who was just out of college asked a few questions. My general approach is to look for how the problem would fit in the concepts I've learned. I gradually derived the solution out of the concepts I knew. And to my surprise, the solution was simply unacceptable to the interviewer, he just clung to his position that I was wrong. He then proceeded to write the answer, he even wrote the test cases.
Now I go back home and check it out of the internet and it was hardly surprising for me to see what I had suspected. The guy didn't want the answer to the question. He wanted exactly the same answer he had memorized. The guy had even memorized the variable names, even the exact input values.
Most people interviewing you on your Algorithm and Data structure skills. They are simply testing your algorithm and data structure rote memorization skills. The same goes in exams.
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoAnd isn't that completely bogus too - you don't want programmers who can regurgitate algos you want ones that can take an overview and know which algos to apply and how to implement them in a timely way using reference material if needs be ... perhaps it's too hard to test for that ability in interview? It's like upthread someone talked about engineering exams - seemingly you don't need working engineers to run through equation derivations and do arithmetic. You want them to understand the basis for the derivations and to have a mental model that will spot if the calculations are way out, for sure, but really you want them to be able to take an overview: know which factors are important, use the engineering tools they have. A practical engineer is going to be using computers to perform calculations (be that chemical processes or electronics or civil structures or whatever). In a way I think we're on the cusp of a change in how we need to approach job focused learning. We're getting to the point where we've stood on the shoulders of so many giants that if you want to operate at the top you can't see the floor any more. By which I mean that maybe the human mind can't cope with the full vertical stack in some fields, that we need to have people either focus at the bottom - understanding the basis on which particular knowledge is built. Or understand the top - be able to work with the tools for implementation. Maybe.
- vidarh 12y agoFrankly it sounds like you dodged a bullet with that interview.