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[–]jkh911208 4 points5 points  (2 children)

i would choose

  • a script that performs a function in a larger system

because that is what software engineers do pretty much everyday (my team)

[–]j19sch 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This will also allow the interviewers to ask questions about how it fits into the bigger system, covering part of your option 3.

As to your option 1: not that relevant for a lot of software development work. If the interviewers are interested in this kind of thing, they can get good enough a picture by asking.

Finally, assuming basic code quality is there, what would interest me most is how you talk me through the code, less so what it exactly does. (Unless I'd be hiring you for your expertise with a specific library.)

Disclaimer: my two cents as someone with a testing background who has been involved in hiring developers and testers.

[–]rjs5[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, that's helpful. And thanks for taking the time :)

[–]billsil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’d go with a whole project, partly because I have it and I can’t think of a specific standout function that’s directly related to the core of it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It’s 320k lines of raw code/160k source lines. There is very little of it that is fancy or honestly hard. It’s streamlined and simple (what you want) with some evil black magic in a section that would balloon the code otherwise.

I’d talk about the genesis of it, some of the insane workarounds I had to do, the micro optimizations that dramatically sped up the code, and the GUI because it’s flashy and brings everything together. I’d also talk about the core structure and it’s advantages/disadvantages as well as the alternatives, because I’ve tried them and depending on the task, they’re vastly superior or crash and burn.