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I once got a similar question, but with Battleship. I don't really enjoy these high-level design things, they seem silly and irrelevant to me, but I can see how

I once got a similar question, but with Battleship. I don't really enjoy these high-level design things, they seem silly and irrelevant to me, but I can see how someone with different interests would like it. (That particular place made me an offer, I'm not doing sour grapes.)

bkeroack 12y ago
So what do you enjoy? "Implement a binary search algorithm for the following list in 10 minutes"? I find CS pop quiz-type questions to be next to worthless in assessing candidates.
- rogy 12y ago
  +1 so many CS graduate interviews involve these sorts of questions, where, just like many CS exams, the people who can memorise the answers just reel them off as they're usually from a subset of about 20 problems. I know a fair few terrible programmers on £40k+ (GBP) jobs straight out of school, because they memorised this subset of problems.
whyaduck 12y ago
Are they irrelevant because you don't do design or because you think design is self evident? Working on a large scale project with technical debt will convince you of how important design is.
- tracker1 12y ago
  All it's convinced me of is that most people don't think about decoupling, structure and reuse... The older I get the more I tend to favor functional composition over more typical OO implementations.
sfbushstreet 12y ago
If you practice ALL of these questions for at least TWO passes: https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ , you can get a software engineer role in at least one of the famous tech companies, e.g., facebook, linkedin, google, amazon, microsoft, ... Nowadays, very very few companies innovate in recruiting. I've interviewed with most "hot" companies, and I can find most interview questions (>90%) from https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/, exact same question.
- pc86 12y ago
  I mean, yes, but if you can write passable code in two of [C++, Java, Python] for 170 problems of varying levels of complexity, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say you're a good programmer and could probably get a SE job at a company I've heard of before.
- stevebot 12y ago
  heh not sure if this is true, or just some self promotion maybe?

bkeroack 12y ago

So what do you enjoy? "Implement a binary search algorithm for the following list in 10 minutes"? I find CS pop quiz-type questions to be next to worthless in assessing candidates.

rogy 12y ago
+1 so many CS graduate interviews involve these sorts of questions, where, just like many CS exams, the people who can memorise the answers just reel them off as they're usually from a subset of about 20 problems. I know a fair few terrible programmers on £40k+ (GBP) jobs straight out of school, because they memorised this subset of problems.

whyaduck 12y ago

Are they irrelevant because you don't do design or because you think design is self evident? Working on a large scale project with technical debt will convince you of how important design is.

tracker1 12y ago
All it's convinced me of is that most people don't think about decoupling, structure and reuse... The older I get the more I tend to favor functional composition over more typical OO implementations.

sfbushstreet 12y ago

If you practice ALL of these questions for at least TWO passes: https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ , you can get a software engineer role in at least one of the famous tech companies, e.g., facebook, linkedin, google, amazon, microsoft, ... Nowadays, very very few companies innovate in recruiting. I've interviewed with most "hot" companies, and I can find most interview questions (>90%) from https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/ https://oj.leetcode.com/problems/, exact same question.

pc86 12y ago
I mean, yes, but if you can write passable code in two of [C++, Java, Python] for 170 problems of varying levels of complexity, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say you're a good programmer and could probably get a SE job at a company I've heard of before.
stevebot 12y ago
heh not sure if this is true, or just some self promotion maybe?