Performance
The tires are spinning, smoke billows out from the back of the car, the foot is to the floor as the car pulls away from the starting line…
What has this to do with performance ?
Balloons in a Room
This is one of those problems that you hear candidates sometimes get asked.
How many Balloons would it take to fill this room ?
Read more
Sparse Arrays
Lets start with one I used to use, sparse arrays.
problem definition: design me a data structure to handle sparse array. An array that contains considerably fewer elements than its immense size. So index can range from 0 to 4,000,000,000 but with considerably less elements (fewer than 1000 to start with). Assuming we are storing integers for simplicity.
[the reason for the definition is that to allocate 4,000,0000,000 array just for 1000 elements is inefficient memory usage]
Read more
Ship Cycles Part 2 – Raising the Bar
never ship bits that have not been tested. Never ship bits that have not been through a full test pass.
never say “oh but it was only a text change”…
Ship Cycles Part 1
Many people who are writing software today as developers probably started out as hobbyists, and tinkers. People writing apps in their spare time and found it as a wonderful career choice. Getting paid for what you were wanting to do anyway. I myself started this way, I wrote little apps as kid to test me on my French verbs at high school (science was more my forte), or to calculate permutations of number for my fathers scheme of winning the lottery someday. At 16 I was offered an opportunity when a friend (Paul) went off to college. he had been working on an application to handle the newspaper deliveries of a shop in his neighbourhood. I got to take over development and support of this running application.
Ship cycles… Read more
Why the New Guy Cant Code Part 2
this is my second part response to a rather misinformed TechCrunch article (see here)
The quote I will address is:
“I don’t mind that Bill Gates is a megazillionaire; he’s done a lot of really interesting and innovative stuff. I do mind that a lot of unworthy people rode his coattails to minizillionaire status, eg the inventor of Hungarian notation, probably the dumbest widely-promulgated idea in the history of the field.”
What is Hungarian notation and why was it useful ?
Interview Questions (the Return of)
I wanted to expand on my other post on riddles and interview questions. (see here)
Why Do We Test Problem Solving in Interviews ?
One of the many skills a good developer must have is good debugging skills. Lets face it, no matter how diligent you’ve been in specification, design and implementation of specific features, there are always situations that arise that weren’t accounted for. This is of course aside from plain-old-mistakes in the coding of the features.
how do you debug a crashing application ? how do you find the place where your algorithm suddenly produces the wrong answer everytime a blue moon occurs ?
Boatman Interview Question Answer
My post about interviews included a quick example of problem that had a real world application. (see here)
for the answer, click more.
Resumes and “why the new guy cant code”
This is a response to an article on TechCrunch.com (see here).
IMHO (in my humble opinion) it missed the whole point.
The point of “problems” or “riddle type questions” are not to throw people into survival its to get people to problem solve on their feet. Most of the people doing interviews, at least when I was at Microsoft, were the very developers that would be working with the new hire. In that situation, they are looking for someone who will fit the job, who can contribute to more than just their little niche, and to be blunt, someone who they’re not going to have to carry.
