ShakyJake
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IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.
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Noodleface
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Interviewing some intern candidates and they want someone with "at least basic/understanding of python"
What kind of coding questions should I ask? Not a python expert
What kind of coding questions should I ask? Not a python expert
Asshat wormie
2023 Asshat Award Winner
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Uhhh have him solve whatever problems you guys usually ask to solve but insist the solution is written in python?
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Some standard Python libraries trivialize typical interview questions. So you either have to say no standard library calls or make the question harder.
Our first question is implementing string->hex number without calling hex(), which is a "builtin" for Python.
After that, we ask them to do a path elision question but that's generally difficult in any language.
chaos
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Had one ask me to do ip sorting before, had to do it twice because apparently "bro just convert to int, .sort() and win" wasn't the intent.
Similarly, I think my solution to that string->hex problem would cause some facepalming with devs.
idk, glad I'm not a dev, I'd get creamed with all this shit.
Similarly, I think my solution to that string->hex problem would cause some facepalming with devs.
idk, glad I'm not a dev, I'd get creamed with all this shit.
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If they didn't say you couldn't use builtins beforehand, that's their fault. The intent of the hex question is not to be some sort of gotcha, because of course you're going to use hex() 100% of the time. We want to see how candidates work through a problem. We give them unfettered internet access, if they just copy/paste a solution, we ask them to start tweaking it.
Noodleface
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This is the first time I've interviewed anyone. So I have no canned questions.
The hex question is a good idea.
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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I hate questions like that hex one. If you, as an interviewer, can't be bothered to come up with a legitimate, real world coding question why should you expect the candidate to take that interview seriously?
Obviously the purpose of coding questions should be to see how a candidate works through a coding problem but what's the point of asking a question that needs such a major caveat to even work and will never, ever need to be done in a real world scenario?
Letting them use the internet and be at a computer is a good interviewing practice so you can see how they'd actually tackle a new challenge in an actual work environment. But man... purposely saying "You're not allowed to use something you'll likely, actually use everyday to answer this question. Like code libraries or built in functions/methods" Ugh.
Obviously the purpose of coding questions should be to see how a candidate works through a coding problem but what's the point of asking a question that needs such a major caveat to even work and will never, ever need to be done in a real world scenario?
Letting them use the internet and be at a computer is a good interviewing practice so you can see how they'd actually tackle a new challenge in an actual work environment. But man... purposely saying "You're not allowed to use something you'll likely, actually use everyday to answer this question. Like code libraries or built in functions/methods" Ugh.
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That's a fair point, perhaps the question is a bit antiquated for Python. I don't think hex() is a builtin for C/C++, that's the focus of development at our company.
Honestly, it's a warmup question. Sometimes we use "build an index", like the back of a book, out of a bunch of words. But that's almost insultingly easy in Python. It has some interesting edge cases though.
Honestly, it's a warmup question. Sometimes we use "build an index", like the back of a book, out of a bunch of words. But that's almost insultingly easy in Python. It has some interesting edge cases though.
ShakyJake
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For junior dev applicants we give them 3 coding challenges:
* reverse a string
* count the number of usages of a word in a string
* SQL stuff that involves table joins. nothing crazy
Each challenge gives explicit acceptance criteria. So we are testing that they are able to code AND can follow instructions.
* reverse a string
* count the number of usages of a word in a string
* SQL stuff that involves table joins. nothing crazy
Each challenge gives explicit acceptance criteria. So we are testing that they are able to code AND can follow instructions.
Noodleface
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Lendarios
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Vinen
God is dead
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Noodleface
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We were switching our code to use a completely different header format in our firmware image object code, but we wanted to support both. So while the object struct used the old header I had to find a way to support both (think, laying down 16MB of data in a buffer and it's expecting the header to be in a different format, different size, different fields). I could easily change it to just use the new header type, but we needed to support both. I ended up changing the header to be defined as a void pointer and casting it as the different headers based on usage. Took a lot of walks around the building and I'm not even sure I like that solution. It was a LOT of code I had to change, and I feel like there was probably something super simple I could've done.
Vinen
God is dead
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Noodleface
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No ifdefs required. I sort of misspoke when I said struct, it's a class with structs in it. Another caveat, the new header has the old header inside it - so its OLD HEADER + NEW HEADER, or just support OLD HEADER.
So this is a basic idea:
C++:
typedef struct header
{
UINT32 checksum;
UINT8 sp_name[SP_NAME_SIZE];
} HEADER;
// Certificate Header
typedef struct {
struct {
UINT32 HeaderMagic;
} Meta;
struct {
UINT8 Buffer[SIZE];
} Certificate;
struct {
UINT8 Buffer[SIZE];
} Signature;
} HEADER2;
typedef struct recv_header {
HEADER2 header2;
HEADER header1;
} RECV_HEADER;The code used to have a member HEADER *header, but now it is void *header.
So I pass it through a constructor, then when used we need to:
C++:
((HEADER *)(this->header))->checksum = (UINT32)checksum;
//OR
((RECV_HEADER *)(this->header))->header1.checksum = (UINT32)checksum;
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Yeah, been a while since I worked with those too
I've been on Python for a while now. I would definitely trust casting in a managed language much more than otherwise.
Noodleface
you aren't worried about possible loss of information from the casting? I mean, I guess you're working with firmware, so you have pretty tight control how this gets compiled and linked.
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