testerofwaters's comments

testerofwaters | 9 years ago | on: Writing a Faster Sorting Algorithm

It might just be faster because the author is comparing their hybrid radix sort implementation to std::sort (which is comparison-based).

Would be more valid to compare to Boost's "spreadsort" which is similarly a hybrid radix sort algorithm (and also outperforms std::sort).

testerofwaters | 12 years ago | on: Should I go to college or keep working in Silicon Valley?

There is a wide variety in the type and format of questions I'm asked.

Phone screen type questions might be stuff like fibonacci, find the min in an array, or find the intersection (shared duplicates) of two arrays.

In-person stuff varies: some companies ask me more practical/specific stuff like Ruby/CSS/JS implementation/coding/design/architectural questions. Others ask puzzle type questions that require me to use data structures in clever ways. Interestingly, hashes and trees are my go-to data structures. Do depth-first search and breadth-first search and that'll get you pretty far with trees. 90% of questions I'm asked require using hashes and/or trees in clever ways.

I actually find interviewing gets more and more fun as you get into it.

testerofwaters | 12 years ago | on: Should I go to college or keep working in Silicon Valley?

I know about basic data structures and know about order of growth. That (and intelligence) will get you through most CS-y interview questions.

Otherwise, the reason I get these offers is because 1) I'm skilled in something that is in particularly high demand (Ruby), so people are more willing to excuse inexperience (but I get rejected often anyway), and 2) I apply to a lot of companies/startups - you only need to have a good day once.

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