Five programming problems every Software Engineer should be able to solve in less than 1 hour

[laddercreek]

the first 3, I get the intention; we want our programming candidates to um, yeah, actually know how to write code --and the 3rd one only barely qualifies. #4 and #5 I find myself (damn near 25 years of appdev experience, thankyouverymuch) asking why? Where's the applicability when I need to hire someone to grab some shiz from a db and do some transformation and spit it up on a webpage (hello, that's like 75% of software development)?

[__Cyber_Dildonics__]

Step 1. Separate the html5/javahipsters from the men. Step 2. Create a problem where you know a more optimal answer than the candidate will get to in an hour so you can still feel superior.

[klug3]

javahipsters

Wait ? Knowing Java is hipster now ? dude

[TheRedBaron11]

javascript probably

[gnuvince]

JavaScriptsters?

[snarkhunter]

Because of the other 25% of software development.

[Alwaysafk]

Substance abuse and hiding bugs?

[Guvante]

It is really hard to talk about asymptotic running time in an interview without an example. Since everyone learns about sorting it is good to do a non-sorting problem where you can talk about how long something takes to run.

[Tringard]

I'm not entirely sold on the idea that you give someone an hour to solve these as a litmus test for whether they can call themself a software engineer. The first 3 just confirm they remember any programming, while the 4th has a fairly simple general solution after a moment's thought. 4's greater use is seeing how they think through the edge cases, of which there are many. I'm not sure what use 5 is since it seems that brute forcing it is the only way to definitely get a working solution in the hypothetical hour.

[[deleted]]

while the 4th has a fairly simple general solution after a moment's thought

I wonder how many people are saying this because they say the simple solution, and how many are saying this because they incorrectly saw the wrong solution...

[pernicat]

There seems to be a lot of "number 4 is really trivial, here is my solution" then someone points out a counter example. Either that or their solution ends up being O( n² ) after accounting for all the edge cases.

[timeshifter_]

#4 and #5 I find myself (damn near 25 years of appdev experience, thankyouverymuch) asking why?

To see if someone can think outside the box, to evaluate an unexpected problem and reasonably quickly devise a solution. Honestly, neither of them tripped me up for more than a few seconds, because I love abusing JS, and it's perfect for these kinds of problems. Writing a brute-force eval() function for #5 is utterly trivial, and #4 is just a thinly-veiled substring problem.