Evening Reading

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  Why are manholes round? : manero
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    So they don't fall through. : freakynipples69
    • YOU'RE HIRED! : manero
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    I was asked this and I still don't understand it. : CapnChaos
    • There's no way to rotate a circle to fit it through a circular hole. A square can be rotated on (so that... : Agrona
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    My 4 yr old daughter calls them "lady holes" because she thinks its fairer, hehe. : jcupitt
    • we men have holes too, you know : hanged_man
  • ive been asked this stupid question before >:( : hanged_man
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  How come dog tags have that little notch in them ? : broly1718
  • Just how they were manufactured, used to stamp. : freakynipples69
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  Is there any special way to handle an object that inherits from IDisposable? If yes, elaborate. : Cheeziologist
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    Well, obviously you have to implement the method defined by it, but it should be used by COM objects, pri... : freakynipples69
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      IDisposable is used by a lot more than just COM objects. : derelict515
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        What else uses IDisposable, and is actually gaining performance benefits from it? If they are not gaining... : freakynipples69
        • It's not about perf really, it's about safety/reliability. Any class holding a limited resource is someth... : derelict515
        • tons of SharePoint classes : Cheeziologist
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    using statement? : stonedonkey
    • yeah, i was going for this. A try with a finally that disposes the object would also be acceptable. I did... : Cheeziologist
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  Given some mathematical equation, for example 3 * 10 + 18 / 6 ^ 4 - 32 * 17 = 4097, write me pseudo code : daVinci1980
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    Hmmm....Is there anything better than O(n!)? I'm not immediately seeing something better. : Cheeziologist
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      no, nothing better. Shocking, isn't it? : daVinci1980
      • now for the hard part: proving it : itsjames
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    Does (3) * 10 + 18 / 6 ^ 4 - 32 * 17 = 4097 count? If so, proved and O(1)! : alias
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      It does not. I eagerly await your next 719 guesses, though. : daVinci1980
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        It was within scope of the problem :( That's my defense, poor requirements. : alias
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          No way, I want to know if any of the parenthetizations of the function would be true. Not just one. :) : daVinci1980
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            See now you are changing the problem. Such an arrangement, while not common, would result in a known tru... : alias
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              No way, I said the same thing in the OP. I even bolded the word 'any'. :) : daVinci1980
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                'Any possible' means at least one though. Although you could even say something like "find the highest... : alias
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                  Are you not understanding the question? : daVinci1980
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                    You asked for any not every. You can always do whatever the order of operations does and place parens ar... : alias
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                      your function will return a boolean value. True if there is any possible way to apply parentheses to make... : Cheeziologist
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                        Ok, given that: checkParens { return true; } Based on the argument that you can follow the order... : alias
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                          You are misunderstanding the problem. Plug in the equation I gave in the OP to wolframalpha. IT's not ... : daVinci1980
                          • I'm pretty sure alias is trolling us at this point. I wouldn't waste any more breath on it : Cheeziologist
                    • I asked if there was any possible way to place parenthesis that makes the given equation true. You've eva... : daVinci1980
            • The algorithm still runs at O(n!). It just lucked out and evaluated it true on the first loop. : shirif
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            You want a function that will insert every single possible combination of parenthesization in that equati... : shortbuscaptain
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              So you get whatever helper classes and functions you want. There're two basic pieces that need to be solv... : daVinci1980
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                Why would you even do that? Stupid. Your problem is poorly constructed. : alias
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                  Because you fail to understand it? It's an interview question. : daVinci1980
                  • Please keep in mind that I'm not looking for people who write html and call it code, or people who think : daVinci1980
                • It's a relatively straightforward comp-sci question. A little theoretical, maybe, but it seems like it wo... : Danny5225
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              It's not very hard, you can assume lots of Hellers and write pseudocode, A solution might look like: Def... : jcupitt
              • Hellers? Argh autocorrect : jcupitt
              • I suppose you can avoid reevaluating the who tree each time since moving brackets will only affect the va... : jcupitt
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  You have to cross a bridge and you have a person who takes 1 minute, another that takes 2... : Freon
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    And there's a flashlight, I forgot how it goes but your mother is a whore. : Freon
    • 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 have 17 minutes : mobab
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  Generate a sequence of pseudo random numbers in the 0-999 range. : jra101
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    Just write a function that uses the congruential generator. Xn = (a * Xn-1) mod 999 : freakynipples69
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      This has a pretty severe problem. : daVinci1980
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        Fuck, can't generate 0. Hmmm. : freakynipples69
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          You can, actually. It's when you generate 0 that there's a problem. : daVinci1980
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            stuck at zero forever, right? : electroly
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              Yep, that's why linear congruential generators are actually of the form Xn = (a * (Xn-1) + c) % maxrand. ... : daVinci1980
              • Ah, gotcha. : freakynipples69
              • And a and c should be large primes, of course. : jcupitt
  • 2, 4, 34, 567, 234, 123, 5, 324, 67, 54, 1, 7, 45 done! : Cheeziologist
• What would you rather have, a bionic arm or a bionic leg? : Mr. Goodwrench
• If you were an animal, what would be your favorite color? : shirif
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  What are the different access levels? Why would you use each one? Why would you use an Interface? Desc... : Agrona
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    First question is easy, not worth actually typing out but it's good to think about in order to communicat... : freakynipples69
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      when describing interface vs base class you probably want to say something about 'is-a' vs 'has-a' rather... : derelict515
      • And really interface-as-contract is nice. Interfaces get you replaceable parts. : Agrona
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  There's 2 ways of swapping two integers, a and b, without using a third variable. What are they? I ac : itsjames
  • oh, and just for pride's sake I'm going to say that I got them both after about 10 minutes and... I didn' : itsjames
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    one more question for you: what's the difference between a delegate and a function pointer? : itsjames
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      In essence, they are the same, but delegates offer type safety, a huge advantage over regular, C style fu... : freakynipples69
      • They're pretty different though, in that delegates can be closures (well, in the sense that C# does closu... : uncleanmonkey
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    b = a + b a = b - a b = b - a That was actually a tricky one. : shortbuscaptain
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      fuck should have spoiler'd for freaky. : shortbuscaptain
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        Nah, I wouldn't haven't gotten it. : freakynipples69
        • *have : freakynipples69
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      lol, your solutions is much more confusing. :D : shirif
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        yours is pretty slick. : shortbuscaptain
        • but produces warnings :(. : shirif
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      that's the one that took me ages to figure out. My interviewer didn't call attention to the datatype of ... : itsjames
      • the hints confused the hell out of me, then I thought that if I add them both... oh fuck yes ding. : shortbuscaptain
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    a=b+(b=a)-a; : shirif
    • I have to give you props, this is way better than the way I did it (which was shortbuscaptain's way) : itsjames
    • ??? Your solution and shortbuscaptain's are equivalent : daVinci1980
    • Actually, does this even work in C#? In C, it's incorrect: http://codepad.org/oxi8no0L In C++, it's u... : daVinci1980
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    Did you know that optimization that kind of swap can actually slow down your code? Compilers are very cle... : dpgagnon
    • i.e., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR_swap_algorithm#Reasons_for_avoidance_in_practice : dpgagnon
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  Hey freaky, how'd you start learning C#? Do you write custom little apps yourself? web stuff? How do you ... : Skoal^Fyfan
  • You can write lots of normal console/client apps in .NET, there's no hosting/running issues unless you're... : derelict515
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    Self taught, I do lots of XNA stuff. : freakynipples69
    • XNA is awesome. : Gary the Llama
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  .Net refering to asp.net? : stonedonkey
  • .Net is an umbrella for C#, F#, VB versions >6, etc. They all compile down to the .Net IL : Cheeziologist
• What brand of Jeans are those? : RookieCAF
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  Four men are buried up to their necks in the sand. There are four hats, two white and two black, and each... : lord cecil
  • 1 looks at 2 and 3, sees they have different color hats says nothing. 2 hears nothing and knows he has... : alias
• Describe the type of design pattern that should be applied when manipulating controls on Windows Forms in... : reelbk
• I'm done for the night. I'd greatly appreciate it if you guys can keep the questions coming though, so I ... : freakynipples69
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  here's a list of questions i ask for senior level web programming dudes... Let's say you're tasked wit... : wtf242
  • my answer to all the noSQL questions would be to write a map reduction function in Erlang : Cheeziologist
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  I have some amount of money, x. Your job is to place that money into a set of bags where the sum of all ... : mobab
  • Never found the fastest way, but my answer was to let each bag be 2^i where i is the index number of the : mobab
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    You've left something out here. I'm guessing your question is something along the lines of "What is the s... : Cheeziologist
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      Yeah, it went missing somewhere during copy/paste. : mobab
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        why can't I say that it's not possible for x=1 or x=2, but any x >=3 involves only 3 bags. Two of the bag... : Cheeziologist
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          That works fine for small numbers, but say I have $10. Using what you said, you would have b1 = $1 b2... : mobab
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            a subset of those bags will sum to any number < x I believe I've fulfilled that requirement. b1 + b2 =... : Cheeziologist
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              Nevermind. I had to look at your spoilered answer to understand, but your question needed to contain a re... : Cheeziologist
              • yeah, he meant every, not any. : Agrona
• #1683

  Refresh Thread

  By: Gary the Llama x Show Full Post

  Reply

  Don't forget to ask them a lot of questions. Remember that you're interviewing them as much as they're interviewing you. Here's a small smattering of questions I asked for my last job. They were very impressed with how thorough I was.
  
  - What do they use for Version Control? Issue Tracking? Continuous Integration? Unit Testing? (If the answer to any of these were "we don't", my next question is always, "Why?")
  - What kind of development systems do they give you? (The best money can buy or junk machines from 1998?)
  - Are two monitors standard for all developers? (I couldn't imagine working with only one.)
  - Will they purchase or reimburse you for tools or utilities that will help you be more productive?
  - Do they follow programming blogs or have they read any good development-related books lately?
  - What salary do you offer? Including super or plus super?
  - Prospects for raises and promotion?
  - Time off for study?
  - How soon do you expect me to be coding when I start?
  - Is the company growing?
  - Perks? Free lunches, foosball, etc.
  - What do you like best about working there?
  - What do you like least?
  - How are conflicts resolved?
  - Does management set reasonable goals and expectations? How do you handle unrealistic or missed deadlines?
  - What might a typical day be like?
  - What are the policies on releasing work as open source?
  - What are the policies on any word I do in my personal time? (You don't want them owning an XNA game you develop in your free time.)
  - What kind of hours can I expect?
  - When was crunch time? How long did it last?
  - Am I expected to be on-call?
  - Can I meet the rest of the team?
  
  I could go on for a while. Feel free to pick and choose.

  Jan 11, 2011 8:34pm PST
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  Don't forget to ask them a lot of questions. Remember that you're interviewing them as much as they're in... : Gary the Llama
  • excellent questions. There are some threads from way back in the shack with a bunch of good ones too. : Agrona
• 1. Write a function to reverse a string. 2. Write a function to reverse the words in a string. 3. Write... : surround
• Just reading these make me break out in a sweat. I hate technical interviews. : SiW.
• Fucken magnets, how do they work? : DingoStoleMyBaby
• what guiness world record did you almost break, also what do you think about $200 jeans : razorblade79
• Explain (not just list) the SOLID principles of good code. : mrblarg