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Don't write on the whiteboard

jperla.com

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Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#101

Post by sliverstorm »

stephengillie wrote: post #50
sliverstorm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly take notes in preparation for an interview. Certainly bring a notebook to an interview. I just don't see this whole "carry a notebook at all times" thing.

Respectfully, what is the benefit to recording your notes and ideas on paper, and using paper at interviews, instead of using txt files in the dropbox folder of the always-connected smartphone in your pocket?

It's way more classy to have & take your interview notes on a legal pad or similar. I would bet money if you kept pulling out your smartphone during your interview, you are not getting a job.

A legal pad looks "prepared". A smartphone looks "distracted".

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#102

Post by reledi »

psykotic wrote: post #92
reledi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a list of sites I keep for ACM ICPC preparation or problem solving for fun: http://livearchive.onlinejudge.org http://coj.uci.cu/OnlineJudge http://www.spoj.pl http://uva.onlinejudge.org http://acm.timus.ru http://acm.sgu.ru http://acm.zju.edu.cn http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~acm00 http://cs.stanford.edu/group/acm http://dwite.ca https://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php http://code.google.com/codejam/contests.h…

You left out Berkeley's annual programming contest: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/programming-contest/ The bottom of the page also has links to problem sets from a bunch of other contests.

Thanks, I was unaware of that one.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#103

Post by georgieporgie »

dlevine wrote: post #98

I have dinged people because they wouldn't write on the whiteboard. To be fair, every time this actually happened, I gave the candidate the chance to write his solution on paper, and I ended up dinged him anyways because his work was sub-par. At every company I have worked at, from two-person startups all the way to Google, we have used whiteboards extensively. Most meetings and architecture reviews are conducted in…

You sound like you have confirmation bias, and your whole point seems to be to adhere to the status quo.

The notion that an engineer's ability can be discerned by willingness and comfort at a whiteboard is utterly ridiculous.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#104

Post by MPSimmons »

gldalmaso wrote: post #24
MPSimmons wrote: post #19

[Disagree] Whiteboarding is a very, very valuable skill. The ability to effectively convey your ideas to a group of people, while presenting what amounts to an extemporaneous speech, is a tremendous asset.

>> is a tremendous asset That is also essential for the applied position?

In the case of me hiring my replacement, yes.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#105

Post by potatolicious »

gldalmaso wrote: post #71
286c8cb04bda wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really practice, it's actual experience. All practice is merely experience. The only way to practice any skill is to use that skill and get better at it.

But there's a great deal of difference between shooting targets and real combat, punchbags and live oponents, ball throwing machine and live adversary just as much as doing whiteboard problems by yourself and during an interview. It's not the same experience.

Then interview more :) I had the fortunate experience of being forced to go through 50+ job interviews during college, and nowadays it's not the least bit stressful. I think I get more anxious driving than interviewing.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#106

Post by jongraehl »

psykotic wrote: post #94
Herring wrote: post #57

Did anyone get the O(document size) solution? I can't see how it would work without checking each word against the list.

Yet another approach: Translate the regular expression for the disjunction of the search terms into a DFA. Then traverse each document with the DFA to find all matches. Traversing a string of length n with a DFA takes O(n) time regardless of the DFA's size. The DFA turns out to be basically the same thing as the trie. Indeed, the standard DFA construction factors out common prefixes of the search terms, just like a t…

Most regex libraries don't do determinization (perhaps awk or grep do, but perl doesn't).

You'll want to do better than just "use a trie" - like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aho%E2%80%93Corasick_string_mat...

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#108

Post by nknight »

dfan wrote: post #8

I like seeing interviewees write on a whiteboard because I can see how they're thinking and help them out if I see that they're running into trouble. The point when I give a whiteboard question is to engage interactively with them over the course of ~15 minutes while they solve a problem, not to sit around and be handed a piece of paper at the end. In addition, communicating with peers via whiteboard is a skill that…

Trying to write code on a whiteboard is not the same as communicating with peers via a whiteboard. I've never written or seen written anything more code-like than function prototypes on a whiteboard outside an interview session.

Design and flows get thrown on whiteboards a lot, but those are not code, and their creation is not remotely like coding. You are "testing" exactly the wrong thing.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#109

Post by nabb »

reledi wrote: post #87
barkingllama wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad the author mentioned Project Euler... I've never heard of it. Anyone else have experience with these problems? Is it a good way to improve your development skills?

Here's a list of sites I keep for ACM ICPC preparation or problem solving for fun: http://livearchive.onlinejudge.org http://coj.uci.cu/OnlineJudge http://www.spoj.pl http://uva.onlinejudge.org http://acm.timus.ru http://acm.sgu.ru http://acm.zju.edu.cn http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~acm00 http://cs.stanford.edu/group/acm http://dwite.ca https://www.facebook.com/careers/puzzles.php http://code.google.com/codejam/contests.h…

I'd add TopCoder and Codeforces to the list:

http://community.topcoder.com/tc

http://codeforces.com/

Both of these sites run a few algorithm competitions every month.

Re: Don't write on the whiteboard

#110

Post by pjscott »

jongraehl wrote: post #106
psykotic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another approach: Translate the regular expression for the disjunction of the search terms into a DFA. Then traverse each document with the DFA to find all matches. Traversing a string of length n with a DFA takes O(n) time regardless of the DFA's size. The DFA turns out to be basically the same thing as the trie. Indeed, the standard DFA construction factors out common prefixes of the search terms, just like a t…

Most regex libraries don't do determinization (perhaps awk or grep do, but perl doesn't). You'll want to do better than just "use a trie" - like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aho%E2%80%93Corasick_string_mat...

Perl will actually use Aho-Corasick string matching for regular expressions like these.
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