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The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

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Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#71

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

ufmace wrote: post #40
rhyperior wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! I used this question regularly. It wasn’t a gotcha question or even an impossible-without-experience question as the author thinks. It was a show me HOW you think through something question. There are a lot of ways to solve it, from scanline to sin/cos to using the circle equation, but you can _progress_ from naive to advanced solutions, and all solutions above plus the DDA or Bresenham solutions have symmet…

I wonder if there's a class of people who managed to get CS degrees but really aren't that good. To them, it might feel more like either you remember the perfect and optimal but complex solution you were taught in a class, or you don't happen to remember it and are completely stuck and can't make any progress at all. I don't think I'd want to hire or work with somebody who can't come up with some sort of solution aft…

> I wonder if there's a class of people who managed to get CS degrees but really aren't that good

This is a horrible over-generalization, but it seems to me that at least for last 10 years or so colleges are creating students who are more like systems integrators (glorified stack overflow cut-and-pasters) than developers who can equally well think for themselves and derive things from scratch.

I learned to program in the late 70's in the 8-bit home computer era, and developers of my generation had no choice but to write most of everything from scratch, other than implementing a few well known published algorithms. You approached everything from a perspective of "how can I solve this problem?" rather than "what can I find to solve this problem for me?". Additionally due to severe hardware constraints (speed, memory) we had to always be creative and think outside the box - the mentality was that nothing was impossible, just a matter of finding the best solution.

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#72

Post by timmg »

My first ever programming interview was like a group interview. There were three or four programmers asking me questions, one at a time.

The only one I remember was to check if two strings were equal (in C). I wrote (maybe buggy) code to iterate both pointers, comparing while looking for the null terminator.

The interviewer stopped me and said, “You should compare their lengths first. If they are different, you can exit early.”

I was pretty young and didn’t know much, but I explained, “But you have to look for the terminator to find length so it’ll take twice as long.”

He snapped, “There are optimized functions for that!”

I assumed he was right. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

Maaaany years later, I realized the std library was probably open source. So I checked (one). It was nice to be vindicated :D

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#73

Post by latexr »

All of them are available as YouTube videos. If you only watch one, I recommend the fourth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ielZBraKsw8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sabeq-FtfGw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE_UNZW-4_U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtgQJT08J1g

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#74

Post by animal531 »

zhxiaoliang wrote: post #20

The author’s memory is remarkable. I hardly remember my own name that far back, LOL. Back then, I knew I would always struggle with those types of interviews, so I always carried a floppy disk with me to them. The disk contained a few programs I had written, and I would simply tell the interviewers, “Don’t give me a quiz. I’m terrible at it, so if you do, I’m out.” However, if they were willing to look at my capabili…

Memory is a funny thing.

I also take months to learn new names, but I can tell you that my second interview ever was for a company which did low level SCADA work. Even though I never took that job or worked in any such related field I can still tell you what it stands for.

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#75

Post by joe_mamba »

dotancohen wrote: post #52
daymanstep wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would far prefer getting managed C# over the Electron garbage that constitutes much of Windows nowadays.

Where in MS Windows is Electron used?

WebView2, not Electron, but same shit.

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#77

Post by kakacik »

mvdtnz wrote: post #38
mikepurvis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell this is from forever ago by floppy disk .

That's an IRL save icon for anyone who's wondering.

3D printed to the finest details, heck it can even store like half a picture.

I fondly recall pirating Strike Commander on 35 floppies, it took quite a few sessions to transfer this since there was quite often some data reading error... good memories, feel like from 5 centuries ago

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#78

Post by rhyperior »

ufmace wrote: post #40
rhyperior wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! I used this question regularly. It wasn’t a gotcha question or even an impossible-without-experience question as the author thinks. It was a show me HOW you think through something question. There are a lot of ways to solve it, from scanline to sin/cos to using the circle equation, but you can _progress_ from naive to advanced solutions, and all solutions above plus the DDA or Bresenham solutions have symmet…

I wonder if there's a class of people who managed to get CS degrees but really aren't that good. To them, it might feel more like either you remember the perfect and optimal but complex solution you were taught in a class, or you don't happen to remember it and are completely stuck and can't make any progress at all. I don't think I'd want to hire or work with somebody who can't come up with some sort of solution aft…

A family member took the same calculus class that I did, from the same teacher. They passed, per their own account, only by memorizing the rules. I memorized what I needed to but the concepts clicked intuitively. So sure, some people “get it” and some people just pass a subject like CS.

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#79

Post by KetoManx64 »

timmg wrote: post #72

My first ever programming interview was like a group interview. There were three or four programmers asking me questions, one at a time. The only one I remember was to check if two strings were equal (in C). I wrote (maybe buggy) code to iterate both pointers, comparing while looking for the null terminator. The interviewer stopped me and said, “You should compare their lengths first. If they are different, you can e…

On the upside, think how annoying it would have been to be part of that team and have a boss that doesn't have any ability to admit he is wrong.

Re: The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)

#80

Post by TZubiri »

anitil wrote: post #22
CamperBob2 wrote: post #8

void CopyString(char *From, char *To) { /* Fill this in */ } The only correct answer to this interview question is "No."

Well in an interview I guess something like "Of course we shouldn't allow C-strings in general outside of syscalls and argv, but for the purpose of the exercise...." And now you've shown that you know what you're talking about and that you won't be difficult to work with.

I don't think it was clear in 1994 that not passing the size of a string was a sin
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