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I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

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Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#381
post #21

This isn't a great example to me. I doubt the interviewers would disagree that the actual code in MVC runs at the "application tier". I think they were just trying to elicit the idea that the model defines interaction with the database and that the view defines interaction with the browser client. That there is some relation there between MVC and 3-tier architecture. The Wikipedia snippet that disputes any relationsh…

The article really rubbed me the wrong way. It feels like the writer was insanely judge mental of interviewer, immediately thinking that he was so much smarter than the guy that he was afraid to embarrass his future boss. All this confirmed by a brief moment if body language? Give me a break.

I do not think I am smarter than anyone else. It's just that some things you know better and other things you don't. I worked with the team lead for several months, and really enjoyed it. He was smart and a very good team lead.

Sorry if my article gave you a wrong vibe.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#382
post #172
post #21

This isn't a great example to me. I doubt the interviewers would disagree that the actual code in MVC runs at the "application tier". I think they were just trying to elicit the idea that the model defines interaction with the database and that the view defines interaction with the browser client. That there is some relation there between MVC and 3-tier architecture. The Wikipedia snippet that disputes any relationsh…

Agreed. I think the better and less risky way to handle this situation is something like: "There are two views on this. Some people say x, but I would argue that the better view is y." Giving the wrong answer intentionally is both dishonest - never a quality I would want to have, especially in an interview - and liable to backfire.

As far as I can remember now, I was also not 100% sure about my answer, because I did need to look it up later to confirm that I was right. So maybe I just took the easy road and answered what I knew they wanted to hear.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article really rubbed me the wrong way. It feels like the writer was insanely judge mental of interviewer, immediately thinking that he was so much smarter than the guy that he was afraid to embarrass his future boss. All this confirmed by a brief moment if body language? Give me a break.

I do not think I am smarter than anyone else. It's just that some things you know better and other things you don't. I worked with the team lead for several months, and really enjoyed it. He was smart and a very good team lead. Sorry if my article gave you a wrong vibe.

I think you're fine. The GP is just threatened by your everyday social intelligence. It's not that you're superior to him, it's that he feels inferior or lacking compared to you.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#384
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha amazingly there’s a chance I interviewed you, or you interviewed with my company when we were first rolling this out, or another company was also using the same question. I remember the idea was to make the analog like one of those analogs that didn’t move continuously but ticked at every sixty second interval. So it never needed to be in between minute ticks. Lots of us didn’t fully understand the question when…

For the record. Most analog clocks have smooth motion for minute and hour (for the precision of the gearing). Its the second hand that ticks.

And conversely there are clocks with smooth movement of the second hand, some

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#385
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha amazingly there’s a chance I interviewed you, or you interviewed with my company when we were first rolling this out, or another company was also using the same question. I remember the idea was to make the analog like one of those analogs that didn’t move continuously but ticked at every sixty second interval. So it never needed to be in between minute ticks. Lots of us didn’t fully understand the question when…

For the record. Most analog clocks have smooth motion for minute and hour (for the precision of the gearing). Its the second hand that ticks.

And conversely there are clocks with smooth movement of the second hand, something I prefer because then there's no annoying ticking noise.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#386
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what I am wrong about, I’m simply pointing out that worse average case performance is sometimes desirable over better average case worse worst case performance. Context is everything. Also some things to note: a) game logic tends not to parallelize very well for various reasons, but even so it depends on the domain of the problem whether or not you can run a parallel algorithm on a linked list, b) if you…

I have never ever seen a linked list in a game, anywhere, serving any purpose.

Look at all the instances of "next" in this file: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/dbe4ddb1...

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the company chose to let themselves be represented by this person. It might also go the other way around, you are interviewed by someone that's awesome and you end up with another team that truly sucks. In that case bad luck but if they send a dick to interview you it is more likely that the rest of them are also gonna be dicks. I like companies where you actually interview with some of the people you will be…

I mean, this is all the surmise of the person writing the article. I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the interviewer never actually did anything wrong in the actual event described. In terms of your idea that a single interviewer should turn you off from working for a company, possibly. Companies can be pretty big. I am skeptical that there are many medium or large companies that can prevent all negati…

It's true that there will be some false negatives. I basically have to go with my gut that if I get a certain strength of a vibe I have to interpret it some way. In one case it was one of the top senior devs interviewing me and didn't like the terms I was using or pronouncing them and seemed to be somewhat hung up on it. I considered that trivial and was trying to get to the meat of the discussion. I took that as a cue for the engineering culture, how would you interpret it?

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immutable doesn't necessarily mean unchanging in the context of data structures. An immutable data structure can support adding, removing, and/or changing the data but the way it does it is in such a way that once data is created it isn't modified until it is completely unused and unreferenced. So an immutable data structure has the benefit that data stays the same and stays the same in memory so it can be shared whe…

Isn't that a persistent DS and I thought OP mistook it for immutable-at-memory-level data structure.. like an array you create once but read many times from..

Well yes but I've always seen immutable DS as synonymous for persistent DS. What OP refers to I've found to be referred to as fixed, const, const static, or compile-time static data structures.

Of course naming in CS and Math is terrible and we love reusing terminology so that everything is confusing but that's just where we are.

I wasn't trying to be negative towards OP or anything. I just saw that since their comment was downvoted so heavily (which it really shouldn't have been), it might be beneficial to reply with an explanation to clear up any misconceptions and smooth out the conversation.

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#389
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge you to try to implement it this way and test that (1) an arbitrary sequence of push/pop is valid and (2) doesn’t use more than linear space.

It's pretty easy to make sure an arbitrary sequence is valid if you make push and pop be almost exact opposites of each other. Let me walk through a simple version based on the description above, ignoring that it's rather inefficient: Start with an array of size 64, with 32 elements. Our first action is either a push or a pop. I'll split those up. * * * If the first action is a push: From here, call the existing arra…

Ah, I was in a rust/c++ frame of mind here—it seems you deeply rely on a copy operation being available, but unless you use indirection and weak pointers it might not be.

I think with copy available this certainly works

Re: I had to give a wrong answer to get the job (2017)

#390
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty easy to make sure an arbitrary sequence is valid if you make push and pop be almost exact opposites of each other. Let me walk through a simple version based on the description above, ignoring that it's rather inefficient: Start with an array of size 64, with 32 elements. Our first action is either a push or a pop. I'll split those up. * * * If the first action is a push: From here, call the existing arra…

Ah, I was in a rust/c++ frame of mind here—it seems you deeply rely on a copy operation being available, but unless you use indirection and weak pointers it might not be. I think with copy available this certainly works

I used copy mostly because the earlier post used it, but we can easily use moves instead. The access operator will just have to use some arithmetic to calculate which array an element is in. Moves also make it easier to have less memory overhead.

If moves aren't available then a resizable array was doomed from the start.

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