Interviewer: can you reverse a string?
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Interviewer: can you reverse a string?
Me: would you like to see a random access invertible shuffle iterator which visits the items in a low discrepancy sequence to improve results in stochastic algorithms?
Interviewer: uhhh?
Me: how bout a point set that is hyper uniform over both space, and separately, time?
Whenever I have to interview again that is how it's going to go down, and will probably result in rejection 😂
@demofox Oh, that's easy. Just perform a complex valued DFT of the byte values twice in a row. It's O(n log n) so it's even *relatively* efficient.
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Interviewer: can you reverse a string?
Me: would you like to see a random access invertible shuffle iterator which visits the items in a low discrepancy sequence to improve results in stochastic algorithms?
Interviewer: uhhh?
Me: how bout a point set that is hyper uniform over both space, and separately, time?
Whenever I have to interview again that is how it's going to go down, and will probably result in rejection 😂
@demofox INTERVIEWER: Can you reverse a string?
ME, pulling a string from my pocket: Of course.
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@demofox INTERVIEWER: Can you reverse a string?
ME, pulling a string from my pocket: Of course.
@shanecelis lol I laughed in real life
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Interviewer: can you reverse a string?
Me: would you like to see a random access invertible shuffle iterator which visits the items in a low discrepancy sequence to improve results in stochastic algorithms?
Interviewer: uhhh?
Me: how bout a point set that is hyper uniform over both space, and separately, time?
Whenever I have to interview again that is how it's going to go down, and will probably result in rejection 😂
@demofox a long long time ago last time I was unemployed and job hunting I had an interview with apple and they asked me to reverse a linked list. so I said I'd use whatever library function is available. interviewer said no, pretend there isn't one. then I gave them a naive O(N) solution and then the interviewer said it was no good because it used recursion and thus too much stack memory and what if the device didn't have enough memory?!
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@demofox a long long time ago last time I was unemployed and job hunting I had an interview with apple and they asked me to reverse a linked list. so I said I'd use whatever library function is available. interviewer said no, pretend there isn't one. then I gave them a naive O(N) solution and then the interviewer said it was no good because it used recursion and thus too much stack memory and what if the device didn't have enough memory?!
@demofox tbh it was good to have bombed that one because it helped me realize I should brush up on my c++ before applying for any of the jobs I actually wanted
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@demofox tbh it was good to have bombed that one because it helped me realize I should brush up on my c++ before applying for any of the jobs I actually wanted
@demofox anyways on the reversing a linked list challenge, I want to say that I asked them what the requirements would be eg context of its use and the interviewer was like :) no just come up with something impress us :) :) but I might be misremembering as that was ~10 years ago.
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@demofox anyways on the reversing a linked list challenge, I want to say that I asked them what the requirements would be eg context of its use and the interviewer was like :) no just come up with something impress us :) :) but I might be misremembering as that was ~10 years ago.
@aeva I like your answers, fwiw.
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@aeva I like your answers, fwiw.
@demofox I still think they are correct answers, because they prioritize not introducing premature complexity before the requirements are known, and if you don't have any requirements, then optimization is a waste of time because you don't know what you're optimizing for.
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@demofox I still think they are correct answers, because they prioritize not introducing premature complexity before the requirements are known, and if you don't have any requirements, then optimization is a waste of time because you don't know what you're optimizing for.
@aeva agreed. They show practical thinking and experience
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@demofox anyways on the reversing a linked list challenge, I want to say that I asked them what the requirements would be eg context of its use and the interviewer was like :) no just come up with something impress us :) :) but I might be misremembering as that was ~10 years ago.
@demofox @aeva I would have fucking punched him, ngl
"Impress me"
"If you're trying to reverse a singly-linked list long enough that stack space is an issue for a recursive algorithm, then your original software design was bad to begin with. Tell me what it's actually trying to do and I'll tell you what you should have used instead (it's probably an array or b-tree)."
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@demofox anyways on the reversing a linked list challenge, I want to say that I asked them what the requirements would be eg context of its use and the interviewer was like :) no just come up with something impress us :) :) but I might be misremembering as that was ~10 years ago.
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@demofox I feel like anyone asking you to reverse a string has either a) not read your resume or b) has a completely broken hiring culture. Either way probably quickest to say a pleasant good bye then and there.
@ataylor I interviewed at a place not that long ago for practice and they ended the interview process early saying they thought how I filled a function out wasnt planned well enough. The task was to fill out a function which took a button press event and it was supposed to act like a calculator.
I was waiting to talk about graphics and crazy algorithm stuff and never got the chance.
They were a big name place too but no sense in shaming them. They were kind. Maybe more behind the scenes? Idk. -
@ataylor I interviewed at a place not that long ago for practice and they ended the interview process early saying they thought how I filled a function out wasnt planned well enough. The task was to fill out a function which took a button press event and it was supposed to act like a calculator.
I was waiting to talk about graphics and crazy algorithm stuff and never got the chance.
They were a big name place too but no sense in shaming them. They were kind. Maybe more behind the scenes? Idk.@ataylor but I had a phone prescreen where we talked about architecting a rendering engine etc and that went well, so then I had to come on site to implement a simple function and get cut early 😂
We are all fallible humans just doing our best, myself included. -
@ataylor but I had a phone prescreen where we talked about architecting a rendering engine etc and that went well, so then I had to come on site to implement a simple function and get cut early 😂
We are all fallible humans just doing our best, myself included.@demofox broken interview processes are unfortunately really common. It’s not really the fault of the people doing the interviewing (usually), but still frustrating to encounter.
In a funny inversion of the typical “I would just call a function” whiteboard problem: I interviewed at a big AAA studio years ago where the interviewer got upset that I had written out a fill loop instead of calling memset. (Which I did specifically because of this problem! You can’t win.)
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@demofox broken interview processes are unfortunately really common. It’s not really the fault of the people doing the interviewing (usually), but still frustrating to encounter.
In a funny inversion of the typical “I would just call a function” whiteboard problem: I interviewed at a big AAA studio years ago where the interviewer got upset that I had written out a fill loop instead of calling memset. (Which I did specifically because of this problem! You can’t win.)
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@morloi @francommit La legge per l'interoperabilità già esiste ma al momento WA supporta solo un'applicazione, ovviamente sconosciuta, chiamata BirdyChat.
Che presa per i fondelli!
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@photovince thanks, fortunately it only took one episode of Bridgerton to arrive in Dublin :)
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@informapirata @enriconardelli @informatica Temo che quello della preparazione dei docenti sarà uno scoglio che farò naufragare tutto. E non solo la preparazione: i pregiudizi nei confronti dell'informatica.
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@Gina Good travels, with or without reading. Sometimes staring out the window is enough poetry for one flight
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L'informatica come disciplina scientifica entra nella scuola: adesso inizia la vera sfida
Dal blog Link&Think di @enriconardelli
https://link-and-think.blogspot.com/2026/02/l-informatica-come-disciplina-scientifica-entra-nella-scuola-ora-inizia-la-vera-sfida.html
@informatica
di Enrico NardelliL’informatica come disciplina scientifica entra nella scuola: adesso inizia la vera sfida
È stato compiuto un passo storico per il sistema scolastico italiano. Con la
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Tregua automobilistica olimpica
Oggi non c'era praticamente nessuno per strada.
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220 – Sanno tutto di noi. Non è intuizione. Sono database rubati https://www.camisanicalzolari.it/220-sanno-tutto-di-noi-non-e-intuizione-sono-database-rubati/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
