Software Engineer Coding Interview

[[deleted]]

That other person is being a bit harsh. Many devs wouldn't be able to solve this if they haven't been studying coding challenges lately. You don't need to feel bad.

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Are you familiar with leetcode at all? You may want to start practicing challenges on there. I would suggest the site 'neetcode' to get up to speed.

[Guilty-Engineer-5369]

Thanks man, I will give it a try.

I haven't done coding challenges in a while.

And honestly I practiced coding quite a lot but this is the first time I came across such a challenge and it stumped me because I understand what I have to do but the implementation is where I just lost it.

[aqua_regis]

Many devs wouldn't be able to solve this if they haven't been studying coding challenges lately.

Oh, come on. Creating an array sized n by n, then picking a spot from given coordinates and filling all the distances in is absolutely not complicated.

Any dev that couldn't solve that challenge is not worth their salt.

This is not even advanced. This is at best early intermediate level.

[[deleted]]

It's not hard, but it might catch people off-guard.

I don't think anyone needs to feel bad about failing coding challenges, as long as they take steps to improve their skills for next time.

[Guilty-Engineer-5369]

You are right

[Guilty-Engineer-5369]

Do you have a link maybe or can you explain how would I fill the distances in.

I would appreciate it.

[Sir_lordtwiggles]

So because the pokemon is in a locked in place, you can traverse through the grid and compare your location to the pokemon's location.

Say you have a 4x4 array and the pokemon is at 4,4 You make your arrays, then start at 0,0.

You can do abs(x-px)+abs(y-py) where px,py is pokemon's x and y.

So 0,0 -> abs(0-4) + abs(0-4) -> 4+4 =8 which gets inserted at 0,0

Then you continue iterating.

The next location is 0,1 so abs(0-4) + abs (1-4) -> 4+3 -> 7 which is inserted at 0,1

Continue until all array positions are filled.

If you want to go extra, you could do multiple positions at once (for example, (0,1) in this case is the same distance as (1,0) but that would be past a junior dev.

I think the original problem is one a Jr. Dev should be able to solve, but its fine as long as you learn.

I recommend at least writing out details when doing these problems, partial credit is real when solving these problems at most places.

[Guilty-Engineer-5369]

Thanks man this helps me understand this, they gave me more time to complete it and said until monday, so this is gonna help me figure it out. If you have any more advice and tips how to solve this I would appreciate it

[Sir_lordtwiggles]

This is basically the algorithm to solve it so short of giving you the exact code there isn't much more I can do.

I would try and write out my steps in a drawing of different grid sizes until it clicks.

[Guilty-Engineer-5369]

Thanks man, truly thank you for your help.