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Typing the technical interview

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Re: Typing the technical interview

#11

Post by eckza »

occultist_throw wrote: post #7

How.. beautiful. Like I said earlier in the "half-dead chicken thread", the occult is a quiet and powerful force in computer science and related areas. With things like neural networks and learning functions, we're approaching the ultimate. In this case, it was only a handful of lines of a functional language that could solve the N-Queens problem.. Of course, mixed with a bit of Lovecraftian lore and Norse magic. It'…

I always like to kindly remind people that sufficiently-advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Re: Typing the technical interview

#12

Post by hifumi »

For the N queens on an NxN chess board, wouldn't you put them in a fibonaci spiral? Of course I can draw the board and explain it, but I have no idea how show that fibonaci formula modified for a chess board. Do you think that would be enough?

Re: Typing the technical interview

#13

Post by lmartel »

hifumi wrote: post #12

For the N queens on an NxN chess board, wouldn't you put them in a fibonaci spiral? Of course I can draw the board and explain it, but I have no idea how show that fibonaci formula modified for a chess board. Do you think that would be enough?

People like Criss who ask this question in interviews are looking for a brute force solution with recursive backtracking.

Re: Typing the technical interview

#14

Post by binarymax »

munin wrote: post #3

This is awesome. I didn't even really see what was happening until it was too late. If you enjoyed that you might enjoy the structure of the proof of the complexity of type inference for \-calculus: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~mairson/Papers/jfp02.pdf . They construct arbitrary boolean circuits from simple types and evaluate the circuits through type checking.

Not sure if you noticed but your username fits the mythological setting :)

Re: Typing the technical interview

#15

Post by kybernetikos »

eckza wrote: post #11
occultist_throw wrote: post #7

How.. beautiful. Like I said earlier in the "half-dead chicken thread", the occult is a quiet and powerful force in computer science and related areas. With things like neural networks and learning functions, we're approaching the ultimate. In this case, it was only a handful of lines of a functional language that could solve the N-Queens problem.. Of course, mixed with a bit of Lovecraftian lore and Norse magic. It'…

I always like to kindly remind people that sufficiently-advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

My favourite casting of this is 'any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced'.

Re: Typing the technical interview

#16

Post by proaralyst »

lmartel wrote: post #13
hifumi wrote: post #12

For the N queens on an NxN chess board, wouldn't you put them in a fibonaci spiral? Of course I can draw the board and explain it, but I have no idea how show that fibonaci formula modified for a chess board. Do you think that would be enough?

People like Criss who ask this question in interviews are looking for a brute force solution with recursive backtracking.

Is that not what's happening here? Except GHC has the recursive backtracking built in? The code looks a lot like the equivalent Prolog implementation.

Re: Typing the technical interview

#17

Post by skybrian »

It's odd. There are people who complain on Hacker News about interviewers who ask about algorithmic complexity: "when are we ever going to need this?"

This is about wasting an interview demonstrating a semi-obscure technique that's fascinating but mostly useless, and it gets widely praised.

Seems like it's just that fantasizing about turning the tables on an interviewer is fun, never mind whether it makes sense or not.

Re: Typing the technical interview

#20

Post by devdas »

occultist_throw wrote: post #7

How.. beautiful. Like I said earlier in the "half-dead chicken thread", the occult is a quiet and powerful force in computer science and related areas. With things like neural networks and learning functions, we're approaching the ultimate. In this case, it was only a handful of lines of a functional language that could solve the N-Queens problem.. Of course, mixed with a bit of Lovecraftian lore and Norse magic. It'…

Remember that computing is a quick way to invoke CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN.
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