Comments by "Christian Baune" (@programaths) on "LeetCode Isnt Real | Prime Reacts" video.
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@KevinJDildonik In interviews, I asked to implement "overlap(a,b,c,d)" where a and b are respectively the lower and upper bound of the first range and c and d are respectively the lower and upper bound of the second range. So, they don't even need to validate that. Yet, most programmer fail to write good code.
And there are plenty of libraries for hat, yet, if they can't write such a simple code (it's a one liner), they certainly can't think about more involved problems where you need to use two or three libraries the right way....
And to top it, in my field (Tree to tree transformation driven by trees), custom made algorithms are a daily thing.
And no, I won't be asking a dev to do something we do on the job, because I don't have 2 weeks of interview ^^
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@Asto508 So, you know and still give attitude 😅
Simple questions are made to target one skill.
That overlap question allows to see how analytical you are. If you have many edge cases, you are already going too fast for your own good. That means you didn't explore the problem at all.
If you do a bit of exploration, then it becomes trivial.
And indeed, problems you'll have at work (in my domain, which is heavy tree-to-tree transformation driven by tree) will be much more complex. So, the questions must be straightforward and probe what is essential. The rest can be learned.
If I were in management systems, which you are probably (e-commerce, ERP, cutom sites, stock management, ...) then you can have a talk "how would you xxx" as it's a good teller if somebody did something.
I could not afford that!
Also, part of my methodology comes from my background in psychotechnics and testing. I was trained in proctoring intelligence tests and practiced for two years. That heavily influenced how I did recruit.
And I know that candidates despised it, because they came prepared with a good script and showcases, then I ask them what makes an HTTP request, why an architecture is unsuitable or to identify what's wrong in a code fragment.
I even fashioned an arithmetic problem in my revised interviews because I felt that it would be an high discriminant. It was 😂
You can disagree; I filtered a lot of candidates but only got rock stars.
For me, that's a good enough proof I did somethig right and a great source of pride and satisfaction.
Diversity of hiring practices ensure that more people find a job! In my interviews, even those who could not sell themselves were hired.
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@buster9877 The original question is indeed with a better naming and a mkre descriptive name.
The question is really good when you know its purpose.
That question is deceptively simple and will throw of people like Astro.
If you explore the problem by drawing the few situations, you will see that there are 15 cases. Which is way too much to handle.
That's where you analytical skills need to kick in.
You would see that there are only 2 cases where there is no overlap, it's when the other set is completely to the left or to the right. And because that's the negation of what you need to implement, you can write the negated condition of "isDisjoint()".
While this level of thinking is not really needed in management systems (where you mostly deal with retrieving and displaying data), it's a basic foundation in my domain since you'll have to solve complex problem each day.
On example I had was:
Text formatting is being represented as a tree of formatting node as such that each node has only 3 values:
- The formatting being applied (bold, italic or underline)
- The children
- The text fragment
Create an array which can be read left to right which can be given to a formatter which will read it sequentially. Each even position will contains an object describing if the folowing text need to be bolded, underlined or italicized, every odd entries will contain the text subjected to the previous entry.
Example: (b("tests",u("another)) -> [{b:true},"tests",{u:true,b:true},"another"]
A bit harder than "overlaps/4".
Yet, that's expected to be no more than 30 minute of work.
(It doesn't use any trick and use basic primitives for working with trees)
Tge irony is that I don't ask questions about trees, because one who can solve an array of problems can learn idioms to deal with trees very easily. The hardest part is solving the problem in a reasonable time.
I also had an arithmetic question and a lot of candidates complaines because they didn't do maths for quite some time. Happens that good abalysis is closely related to math 😅 So, that's a proxy for their raw analysis skills and the "not my job" behavior.
Good questions are rarely what they seem to be. Candidates lie ^^
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@Coach-Solar_Hound The original question is indeed with a better naming and a more descriptive name.
The question is really good when you know its purpose.
That question is deceptively simple and will throw of people like Astro.
If you explore the problem by drawing the few situations, you will see that there are 15 cases. Which is way too much to handle.
That's where you analytical skills need to kick in.
You would see that there are only 2 cases where there is no overlap, it's when the other set is completely to the left or to the right. And because that's the negation of what you need to implement, you can write the negated condition of "isDisjoint()".
While this level of thinking is not really needed in management systems (where you mostly deal with retrieving and displaying data), it's a basic foundation in my domain since you'll have to solve complex problem each day.
On example I had was:
Text formatting is being represented as a tree of formatting node as such that each node has only 3 values:
- The formatting being applied (bold, italic or underline)
- The children
- The text fragment
Create an array which can be read left to right which can be given to a formatter which will read it sequentially. Each even position will contains an object describing if the folowing text need to be bolded, underlined or italicized, every odd entries will contain the text subjected to the previous entry.
Example: (b("tests",u("another)) -> [{b:true},"tests",{u:true,b:true},"another"]
A bit harder than "overlaps/4".
Yet, that's expected to be no more than 30 minute of work.
(It doesn't use any trick and use basic primitives for working with trees)
Tge irony is that I don't ask questions about trees, because one who can solve an array of problems can learn idioms to deal with trees very easily. The hardest part is solving the problem in a reasonable time.
I also had an arithmetic question and a lot of candidates complaines because they didn't do maths for quite some time. Happens that good abalysis is closely related to math 😅 So, that's a proxy for their raw analysis skills and the "not my job" behavior.
Good questions are rarely what they seem to be. Candidates lie ^^
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@Coach-Solar_Hound The original question is indeed with a better naming and a more descriptive name.
The question is really good when you know its purpose.
That question is deceptively simple and will throw of people like Astro.
If you explore the problem by drawing the few situations, you will see that there are 15 cases. Which is way too much to handle.
That's where you analytical skills need to kick in.
You would see that there are only 2 cases where there is no overlap, it's when the other set is completely to the left or to the right. And because that's the negation of what you need to implement, you can write the negated condition of "isDisjoint()".
While this level of thinking is not really needed in management systems (where you mostly deal with retrieving and displaying data), it's a basic foundation in my domain since you'll have to solve complex problem each day.
On example I had was:
Text formatting is being represented as a tree of formatting node as such that each node has only 3 values:
- The formatting being applied (bold, italic or underline)
- The children
- The text fragment
Create an array which can be read left to right which can be given to a formatter which will read it sequentially. Each even position will contains an object describing if the folowing text need to be bolded, underlined or italicized, every odd entries will contain the text subjected to the previous entry.
Example: (b("tests",u("another)) -> [{b:true},"tests",{u:true,b:true},"another"]
A bit harder than "overlaps/4".
Yet, that's expected to be no more than 30 minute of work.
(It doesn't use any trick and use basic primitives for working with trees)
Tge irony is that I don't ask questions about trees, because one who can solve an array of problems can learn idioms to deal with trees very easily. The hardest part is solving the problem in a reasonable time.
I also had an arithmetic question and a lot of candidates complaines because they didn't do maths for quite some time. Happens that good abalysis is closely related to math 😅 So, that's a proxy for their raw analysis skills and the "not my job" behavior.
Good questions are rarely what they seem to be. Candidates lie ^^
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@Coach-Solar_Hound The original question is indeed with a better naming and a more descriptive name.
The question is really good when you know its purpose.
That question is deceptively simple and will throw of people like Astro.
If you explore the problem by drawing the few situations, you will see that there are 15 cases. Which is way too much to handle.
That's where you analytical skills need to kick in.
You would see that there are only 2 cases where there is no overlap, it's when the other set is completely to the left or to the right. And because that's the negation of what you need to implement, you can write the negated condition of "isDisjoint()".
While this level of thinking is not really needed in management systems (where you mostly deal with retrieving and displaying data), it's a basic foundation in my domain since you'll have to solve complex problem each day.
On example I had was:
Text formatting is being represented as a tree of formatting node as such that each node has only 3 values:
- The formatting being applied (bold, italic or underline)
- The children
- The text fragment
Create an array which can be read left to right which can be given to a formatter which will read it sequentially. Each even position will contains an object describing if the folowing text need to be bolded, underlined or italicized, every odd entries will contain the text subjected to the previous entry.
Example: (b("tests",u("another)) -> [{b:true},"tests",{u:true,b:true},"another"]
A bit harder than "overlaps/4".
Yet, that's expected to be no more than 30 minute of work.
(It doesn't use any trick and use basic primitives for working with trees)
Tge irony is that I don't ask questions about trees, because one who can solve an array of problems can learn idioms to deal with trees very easily. The hardest part is solving the problem in a reasonable time.
I also had an arithmetic question and a lot of candidates complaines because they didn't do maths for quite some time. Happens that good abalysis is closely related to math 😅 So, that's a proxy for their raw analysis skills and the "not my job" behavior.
Good questions are rarely what they seem to be. Candidates lie ^^
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