Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

2banks1swap.avi posted:

Working for the health care industry - what do they look for, database skills?

something like that...

# ¿ May 9, 2011 19:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 05:12

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Paolomania posted:

Sounds to me like he wants the set of words in the dictionary such that the set contains more than one word, all the words in the set are spelled with the same set of letters (are anagrams), the anagrams are of length as long or longer than the length of the words in any other set of anagrams ("has the longest anagram"), and the set contains more words than any other set of anagrams of the same length ("is the largest set of words"). Or I could be wrong and by "anagrams" he means "grammatically correct sentences constructed from words in the dictionary that are anagrams of other grammatically correct sentences constructed from words in the dictionary", but given the timings he quoted I doubt this is the correct interpretation.

I read that as "the set of words with the largest amount of letters that can be rearranged into a set of valid words with no letters left over"

# ¿ May 20, 2011 21:14

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Chasiubao posted:

A lot of companies call their developers software engineers for a reason Didn't you have to learn some programming in first year Engineering or something? I'm sure a mech would be fine as a dev.

I know a professionally employed MechE who knows nothing from his curriculum. He is mathematically inclined, and he's teaching himself programming from the MIT open courseware sites.

So, MechEs can be programmers, but sure as hell not from their curriculum.

# ¿ May 23, 2011 07:43

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

shrughes posted:

I graduated in December and started looking in January.

which january -- the one before you graduated, or the one after?

IIRC didn't you have a grad school app that went through late or was that someone else?

# ¿ May 27, 2011 07:55

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

baquerd posted:

Generally they're moving to another job if they're doing that, or alternatively they are financially retarded.

...or they're facing a personal crisis (family illness etc) that means they have no time to work.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2011 19:38

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Comment to document the purposes of your classes / functions. also comment anything "clever" you do (but better yet don't do anything clever)

# ¿ Aug 17, 2011 01:23

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Orzo posted:

I'm waiting for the candidate that says quantum bogosort. That's a hire.

Wait is this the LC thread

Hahahaha I'd never heard of this, so I'm posting it for those who also hadn't:
http://www.mathnews.uwaterloo.ca/Issues/mn11103/QuantumBogoSort.php

TasteMyHouse fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Aug 19, 2011

# ¿ Aug 19, 2011 17:20

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Ithaqua posted:

Did they have CS backgrounds? I remember a little about sorting algorithms from my college days, but I haven't had to actually implement a sort since then. At this point, if you asked me "how does a quicksort work?" I'd just shrug. Something involving partitioning.

the details of the partitioning often escape me but the basic concept (pick a pivot, put numbers smaller than the pivot on one side, numbers larger than the pivot on the other, recurse) is simple enough to remember

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 03:35

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Quicksort isn't O(n*log n). It's O(n²)

# ¿ Aug 20, 2011 21:33

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Cicero posted:

I thought it was O(n^2) in the worst case but O(nlogn) in the average?

edit: Wikipedia confirms. Also in order to get the worst-case scenario you either have to have data explicitly designed to screw with quicksort or have astronomically terrible luck.

I was being pedantic, but since (by definition) big O notation is a specification of an upper-bound on the growth rate, if you don't specifically say "in the average case" you're automatically referring to worst case performance.

Also I should note that depending on the implementation you can get worst-case performance on already-sorted lists with quicksort, which is not an astronomically unlikely case.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2011 18:16

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

rjmccall posted:

Technically, it can be made O(n log n) because there's a linear-time median algorithm. Nobody ever does this, though.

I'd like to see that. Do you have a link?

# ¿ Aug 21, 2011 18:20

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

shrughes posted:

The fact that people use O notation this way is proof that your definition of how big O notation should be used is just a fantasy.

Or that I learned big O from engineers, not CS professors. Thanks for the schooling.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2011 21:06

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

shrughes posted:

For example, people say all the time that a vector's push_back operation takes constant time, but they really mean it takes constant time on average, or amortized over a bunch of operations.

I'm with you for most of what you said but if you're talking to someone who doesn't already know the time complexity of push_back and you don't say constant AMORTIZED time then you're the worthless rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2011 00:08

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

From Wikipedia:

quote:

In Canada, it is considered illegal to practice engineering, or use the title 'Engineer', without a Professional engineers license.

quote:

In the United States... The title "Engineer" is legally protected in many states, meaning that it is unlawful to use it to offer engineering services to the public unless permission is specifically granted by that state, through a Professional Engineering license, an "industrial exemption", or certain other non-engineering titles such as "operating engineer". Employees of state or federal agencies may also call themselves engineers if that term appears in their official job title. The IEEE's formal position on this is as follows: "The title, Engineer, and its derivatives should be reserved for those individuals whose education and experience qualify them to practice in a manner that protects public safety. Strict use of the title serves the interest of both the IEEE-USA and the public by providing a recognized designation by which those qualified to practice engineering may be identified." It is generally a requirement in the United States to have at least a Bachelor of Science degree in an engineering discipline or related applied science to be considered an engineer and practice as such.

Software engineers are (imo) no more "Engineers" than are "Audio Engineers"

# ¿ Aug 24, 2011 00:05

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Linked Locomotion Coordinator.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2011 18:20

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

such hate for Vi is really bizarre. I've never seen that before. Vi is a perfectly cromulent editor.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 06:42

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

dazjw posted:

And the text editor thing is because someone who claims to use vi in 2011 but hasn't heard of vim is either lying or stupid. Come on now.

The hypothetical interviewee doesn't claim to have never heard of Vim, they just choose not to use it. This makes sense to me, because vi is standard on all Unix-y systems, whereas sometimes Vim needs to be separately installed. If vi works for you, why go through the trouble?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 14:09

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

If you don't know Big O, and at least have an inkling of how different common algorithms and data structures work, you're going to end up in the coding horrors thread.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2011 15:26

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Or just commute on the loving MBTA commuter rail

# ¿ Sep 17, 2011 01:29

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

MrMoo posted:

what is ++2 && ++2

...a compile error?

# ¿ Oct 3, 2011 21:40

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Hu Fa Ted posted:

Not sperg out when I ask what a pointer is (or sperg out in general)

What kind strange things would people say w/r/t pointers? "a pointer is a variable whose value is the memory location of another variable"

# ¿ Oct 9, 2011 18:12

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

kitten smoothie posted:

I once worked with someone who once told me "I know C, but I just plain do not get pointers." Bozo bit: flipped.

Thank you. I had someone do something similar to me on a Microsoft interview when I was about to graduate college. I way overestimated my abilities with C++ and the interviewer did me a great favor by tearing me a new rear end in a top hat with questions that she totally knew I would have no clue about. It taught me a very necessary degree of humility.

I wanna know what kind of questions were asked :3 I wanna see how I measure up

# ¿ Oct 10, 2011 04:42

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Piss Man 94 posted:

Had an interview the other week. I asked the guy to program A Thing so he made a new class and started writing code his code outside the class

edit: Java position

Like, just in the file, completely outside of the class or a function or anything? that's weird.

He could've been coming from C++ though, where classes are written like this:

code:

// foo.h
#ifndef FOO_H
#define FOO_H

class Foo 
{
    void bar();
public:
    Foo();
};

#endif

and in a completely different file....

code:

//foo.cpp
#include <iostream>
#include "foo.h"

void Foo::bar()
{
    std::cout<<"lol C++"<<std::endl;
}

sorry if you already knew this

# ¿ Oct 12, 2011 12:59

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Piss Man 94 posted:

like so:

code:

class ImADummy{

}

/* CODE GOES HERE */

Welp, that isn't valid in any language that I know of, sounds like he was just a complete moron.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2011 17:55

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Good Will Punting posted:

I cannot believe I just saw this thread now. Holy poo poo, this is a goldmine.

I'm in my first Data Structures class and would like to really rock the gently caress out of the material but my teacher is a little mediocre so I'm looking for some good supplementary reading. Anything, really. Books, websites, anything that would be a big help. Right now, we're doing Linked Lists. Yes, I realize something has probably been mentioned but this is a long thread!

Sorry if this seems rude, but you seem to be confused -- this thread is for advice on getting jobs, doing well in interviews, etc. If you just want to talk about core CS concepts, there's the general programming questions thread... and IMO the best programming discussion goes on in the C++ thread, so go ask your questions there (like we told you to in that thread :P)

# ¿ Oct 13, 2011 20:28

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

Well, it IS the programming subforum after all :confused:

# ¿ Oct 13, 2011 20:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 05:12

TasteMyHouse: Dec 21, 2006

PDP-1 posted:

"use mergesort for this problem but use quicksort for that problem" that most traditional CS grads seem to take for granted

For almost all applications, you just use whatever the built-in sort for the language is (timsort :3:

)

# ¿ Oct 18, 2011 03:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Newbie Programming Interviews/Get a Job Megathread: Fake it 'til you make it