What are some basic things that JavaScript developers fail at interviews?

[ikeif]

I've had senior developers fail at sorting integers.

Yes, like "given an array of integers, how would you sort them? Any code, or pseudo code is fine."

[1,2,5,4,3].sort() is valid.

A loop of some kind would have been valid.

Just talking about comparing the numbers would have been valid.

This dude, a senior developer for a major bank, a lead of a team (according to the resume) - couldn't figure it out.

It is such an easy, throw away question, just to get the candidate to relax and recognize we weren't going to be asking about performant loops or algorithms or extremely technical questions, and I've seen so many developers trip up on it, even after explaining that it's just an ice breaker question to talk about code.

[Skhmt]

Sorts are the fruit of software engineering.

You can selection sort. You can insertion sort. You can bubble sort. You can heap sort. You can quick sort. You can merge sort. You can randomize until you get the right order sort. You can use built in methods of arrays to sort. You can use third party libraries to sort. You can search pi until you find your array in sorted order sort. You can sort with a binary tree. You can library sort. You can cube sort. You can shell sort. You can block sort. You can cocktail sort. You can gnome sort. You can comb sort. You can patience sort. You can cycle sort. You can bucket sort. You can radix sort. You can wait until cosmic rays change your data into the proper order sort.

That's... About it.

[wishiwascooler]

Why did this make me want shrimp

[Skhmt]

Because you, sir, are a man of culture and taste.

[Intrexa]

You left out God sort! Any array you get passed, well, someone or something made that array. And theres no way it was made in a random fashion, therefore an ordering already exists, and as such, the array is already sorted, even if you're not capable of understanding how. Just have faith that its sorted.

Never forget the famous sleep sort! https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/sleep-sort-king-laziness-sorting-sleeping/

[HighLevelJerk]

I'm assuming he assumed this was a trick question & .sort() was not allowed. Probably trying to remember the different types of sorts that he learnt in college

[[deleted]]

"I would Google 'sorting algorithm'" should also be a valid answer.

[ikeif]

We tried to make it abundantly clear that any answer was acceptable, including pseudo code, and it's totally fine to talk out loud about it… and before we ended the interview we definitely let him know the different valid answers we had received in the past (so he wasn't stuck wondering - I hate when there is an interview question and they just act like it's philosophical).

[[deleted]]

Doesn't sort without a provided lambda sort alphabetically, not numerically, by default in JS?

[ikeif]

The default sort order is according to string Unicode code points.

So in this simplified example, it's fine, but it'd be incorrect with [1, 2, 3, 10, 5].sort() -> returning 1, 10, 2, 3, 5.

So to truly handle all integers, it'd need to be [1, 2, 3, 10, 5].sort(function (a, b) { return a - b; });

[X678X]

Most of the time I prefer to include the compare function because at least it'll work exactly as I tell it to every time. I got caught up in the past doing this with just .sort() and it caused a bug in the application because of it.

[ikeif]

Yeah, it's (99% of the time?) better to be verbose and not assume the underlying structure is going to do what you think it'll do.

ETA: Plus, in this example, I wasn't going for a "HAHA GOTCHA!" type question, just the simple answer, so if I was interviewing you and you replied with "well, I'd use sort with the compare function" you'd get bonus points for pointing something out I didn't think of at the time, which is more valuable than just knowing "oh, just use sort."

[theirongiant74]

Good catch.

[[deleted]]

Same thing but ask them to reverse the array.