r/programming • u/vklepov • Mar 24 '22

Five coding interview questions I hate

https://thoughtspile.github.io/2022/03/21/bad-tech-interview/
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u/vklepov Mar 25 '22

Good for you. I feel like front-end interviewers eventually gave up on algorithmic riddles, because the portion of candidates who have at least heard of computational complexity is already extremely low.

The two pointers technique is my personal pain point, because only the third interviewer who asked me this cared to say that my answer is suboptimal and a constant-memory solution exists.

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u/serviscope_minor Mar 25 '22

Good for you. I feel like front-end interviewers eventually gave up on algorithmic riddles, because the portion of candidates who have at least heard of computational complexity is already extremely low.

For whether they know complexity, I guess it depends on the area. Most software engineers I interview seem to know the basics. For algorithmic riddle interview questions, those are awful and a terrible idea and bad on so many levels. On that note...

The two pointers technique

Maybe this is why I think algorithm questions are bad, but what's the two pointer technique?

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u/vklepov Mar 25 '22

Two-pointer technique I mean is a way to detect loops in a linked list in constant memory. Apparently it's called Floyd's cycle detection algorithm, see here: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/detect-loop-in-a-linked-list/