Re: Offtopic: How to Design Programming Tests

[Michael Bogomolny <bogo@bigfoot.com>]

yes, the better candidates do tend to ask more questions, and also
express themselves much better when answering the question. That's why
I think it is a good question, it can seperate good candidates from
bad candidates. Furthermore, those questions are language
independent. To my mind, any decent programmer can learn Java in a
short while, but not everyone can learn to be a good programmer.

it is also a lot less insulting then asking them to write a piece of
code.

-bogo

On Feb 02, 2001 01:02, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
| Michael Bogomolny wrote:
| 
| > Another question I often ask: assume you have a(n unordered) set of
| > numbers, and you know nothing about the range or distribution of the
| > numbers. How would you go about finding if there exist two numbers in
| > the set that add up to m?  This question tests their mastery of data
| > structures. Everyone gets the dumb n^2 method first, the better ones
| > upon more thought decide to do a sort first and get a n log n
| > solution, and the occasional standout thinks about creating a hash
| > table to get a near-linear solution.
| 
| I would think the real standout would ask you why you want to do this,
| where the numbers are coming from, whether the problem is on-line or
| off-line, how many numbers there are likely to be, who's expecting
| them, how much space you have, whether an approximate solution is
| acceptable and, if so, with what tolerance, and why this problem
| matters.  Each answer affects which solution is most appropriate, and
| some introduce many more solutions than the ones you list.
| 
| Problems without contexts are puzzles.  An interview that poses
| puzzles rather than problems may not yield the most desirable results.
| Remember Part 10 (Galileo was Right) of From the Earth to the Moon?
| 
| Shriram