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How to Pass a Programming Interview

blog.triplebyte.com

1–10 of 570 posts

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#2
A large number of bad things influence interview decisions (credentials, targeted practice, how well you know the specific algorithms that come up again and again in interviews). I hope that more programmers getting better at interviewing skills will help move companies toward measuring actual programming skill.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#3
Another tip which I give: Interviewers vary widely in how much they care about whether your syntax is accurate, whether you handle invalid inputs, and whether you write unit tests. It's really useful to ask the interviewer whether they want you to worry about those things.

If you handle invalid inputs for an interviewer who doesn't care about that, they're going to be a little annoyed by you going more slowly than needed. If you don't handle invalid inputs for an interviewer who does care, then they'll think you're careless.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#4
It very much depends on the gig, but I would add another item to the list: Show a basic understanding of UX design. Companies need people who can mediate between designers and programmers. While demonstrating an understanding of Photoshop and Illustrator says nothing about your skills as a programmer, it could be the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#5
post #4

It very much depends on the gig, but I would add another item to the list: Show a basic understanding of UX design. Companies need people who can mediate between designers and programmers. While demonstrating an understanding of Photoshop and Illustrator says nothing about your skills as a programmer, it could be the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd.

But "an understanding of Photoshop and Illustrator" is to "a basic understanding of UX design" as "an understanding of vi or emacs" is to "a basic understanding of distributed application architecture"

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#6
post #4

It very much depends on the gig, but I would add another item to the list: Show a basic understanding of UX design. Companies need people who can mediate between designers and programmers. While demonstrating an understanding of Photoshop and Illustrator says nothing about your skills as a programmer, it could be the thing that makes you stand out from the crowd.

Sadly, very few companies care about UX when interviewing.

Well, actually, most companies I have interviewed with care about core CS fundamentals and nothing else.

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#9
Another great post from Triplebyte, but I am confused about their model. Why would candidates want to apply to Triplebyte, if they still have to go through the companies' full interview process on top of the Triplebyte process ?

Re: How to Pass a Programming Interview

#10
> "That’s exactly the point. These are concepts that are far more common in interviews than they are in production web programming."

The list includes things like Big-O analysis. While, formal analysis is certainly not a day to day occurrence of most programming, knowing what the runtime complexity of the code you are writing is almost always important.

While, I generally don't care for most algorithmic problems, I am honestly concerned when someone can't tell me that something runs in O(n^2) and good probably be optimized.

EDIT: I should note, I'm not necessarily looking for them to use precise term here, but they should be able to clearly articulate it.

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