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I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

erenyagdiran.github.io

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Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#271

Post by malka »

cmdrfred wrote: post #183
sauere wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of participants just try to open a web-browser and type in "what is the IP address of google" Oh god.

I don't know why this is downvoted. This is Hacker News, a hacker always uses the least amount of effort (the least number of lines of code for example) to achieve his goal. Windows key + R / "cmd" / Return / "nslookup google.com" then when that fails, "ping 8.8.8.8" and when that fails, "Ipconfig /ALL", then ask "Do you use Dhcp or are ip's assigned?" as I reboot the computer and check the physical connections at th…

Agreed.

A good hacker is a lazy hacker.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#272

Post by clarry »

davidgerard wrote: post #240
vinceguidry wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I confess I don't know how I'd apply this to developers. They pass fizzbuzz, OK - what do you do next? I know what I would do, just have a 10 minute conversation with them about technology. I can easily figure out just where a person is in regards to their development as a programmer just by listening to them talk about what they're paying attention to in the tech landscape. If they don't blink when I mention Hacke…

Not infallible - I could talk tech near-perfectly (I am a native speaker of BS), but I am most definitely not a coder pretty much at all - but a good start.

Also, using HN and its fads as a measure of motivation sounds a little elitist. There are really awesome and motivated coders out there who couldn't care less about politics, mainstream tech media news articles, gadgets, Apple-does-this, Google-does-that, cool new language or JS toy of the week... these coders are likely focused on their code instead.

Programming is a wide field, there's much more to it than the front page discussions on HN can cover.

Of course, if you're looking for a Web developer to make "cool new stuff" for the latest fadgets..

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#273

Post by ngcazz »

tptacek wrote: post #185
jere wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes microcorruption was a lot of fun and the last part of this post reminds me very much of the last level. The nice thing about microcorruption was how you didn't need much more than familiarity with assembly and C (and language of choice in the end game). This interview challenge on the other hand... I wouldn't even know where to start.

Thanks! It's worth saying here: Hans, Nicholas, Daniel, Andy and I wrote Microcorruption in order to be the basis of job interviews. :)

Had a lot of fun with it! Props!

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#274

Post by twosheep »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #92
ckaygusu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it was also the part of the key.

Could you change the jmp into a nop, then xor every nth byte of the program with jmp xor nop, where n = whatever offset the jmp was at in the key? The result should be a valid decryption.

I understood some of those words.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#275

Post by freehunter »

pedrosorio wrote: post #244
freehunter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I saw the "Barcelona,Spain" on his about page and incorrectly assumed that is where he was originally from.

Barcelona, Spain would have implied Catalan, not Spanish.

I know that's what the Catalan government says, but is it actually the case? Wikipedia says

"As an official language, Spanish is understood almost universally in Barcelona. In addition, 95% of the population understand Catalonia's own native Catalan language, while 74.6% can speak it, 75% can read it, and 47.1% can write it"

A writing literacy of less than 50% sounds pretty poor.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#276

Post by joeblau »

I love the way the way m00dy dissected the problem. About 2 months ago, I was watching some advanced LLDB videos from Apple and they went into a lot of the tricks detailed in this post for setting breakpoints and debugging a program. That being said, some of the knowledge about halting commands and configuring gdb to ignore debug mode are just some things only a pro would know.

Great job and thanks for the great read.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#277

Post by vonmoltke »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #196
davidgerard wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The test I describe should take an hour or two - it's a test of "can you actually do these things your CV claims you can?" Which is nontrivial, but I enjoyed taking it (fix a broken thing!) and feel fine about giving it to others.

>"can you actually do these things your CV claims you can?" Yeah but how many questions must you ask before you are certain? Otherwise you're rolling the dice that the candidate has simply seen that problem before but has terrible habits otherwise. Reduce the time required and you risk more false positives. Increase the time required, and you risk the skilled ignoring you.

Since I think companies are overall hurting themselves with hypersensitivity to false positives, I vote for the former.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#278

Post by vinceguidry »

clarry wrote: post #272
davidgerard wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not infallible - I could talk tech near-perfectly (I am a native speaker of BS), but I am most definitely not a coder pretty much at all - but a good start.

Also, using HN and its fads as a measure of motivation sounds a little elitist. There are really awesome and motivated coders out there who couldn't care less about politics, mainstream tech media news articles, gadgets, Apple-does-this, Google-does-that, cool new language or JS toy of the week... these coders are likely focused on their code instead. Programming is a wide field, there's much more to it than the fron…

You make light of web development, but that's driving the enormous demand for programmers in recent years and all of our salaries. I bumped my pay $20K when I took this job and I'm now asking for $30K more after a year. Most fields calcify after a few years and salaries level off as the managers do their thing. But making "cool new stuff" and the "latest fadgets" is still really hard. It might be the fashion industry, but business is booming.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#279

Post by orkoden »

rqebmm wrote: post #230
davidgerard wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Testing for sysadmins is easier: you're after a way of thinking . So a competence test ("can you do what you claimed?") with a freeform "keep notes on your thinking along the way" is quite informative. You still need to interview, of course. I confess I don't know how I'd apply this to developers. They pass fizzbuzz, OK - what do you do next?

Speaking as an iOS developer who's had a hand in hiring, it's the same as the "slightly broken Apache and Tomcat" scenario someone posted for sysadmins. We ship people a slightly broken app with a few common-yet-googleable problems, then ask them to build a tiny thing on top of that and ship it back to us. The ability to solve common problems acts as a good proxy for experience, If they can't google how to fix a reta…

For iOS developers I found that a good test was to download and parse some XML or JSON API of a web service and display the result in a UITableView. . It' surprising how many people can't accomplish this.

Re: I was asked to crack a program in a job interview

#280

Post by rqebmm »

orkoden wrote: post #279
rqebmm wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an iOS developer who's had a hand in hiring, it's the same as the "slightly broken Apache and Tomcat" scenario someone posted for sysadmins. We ship people a slightly broken app with a few common-yet-googleable problems, then ask them to build a tiny thing on top of that and ship it back to us. The ability to solve common problems acts as a good proxy for experience, If they can't google how to fix a reta…

For iOS developers I found that a good test was to download and parse some XML or JSON API of a web service and display the result in a UITableView. . It' surprising how many people can't accomplish this.

Agreed! That's exactly the "tiny thing" we ask people to build.
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