Friday, September 26, 2014

Design Interview Questions



http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Practice_Questions_Person_A.pdf
Question: Text Editor
Describe a design for a text editor. Describe the classes, interfaces, and so on that you would use and how you would organize them. 

Answer: There are so many possible answers to this problem that it would be difficult to say that one answer is the best. 

Look to make sure that they make classes to set up a text editor (classes for the GUI, formatting, saving/loading files, handling input, etc.). 

Using inheritance (subclassing in object‐oriented programming) where it makes sense is also good for reusability and extendability. 

Using design patters (such as Model‐View‐Controller, Listener/Observer, or the Singleton pattern) is also a good thing. The main point is for them to get used to thinking about how they would design a system. Most importantly, they need to think about simplicity, reusability, and extendability in their design.

A text editor design question is slightly different from other design questions in that programmers often have strong feelings about how a text editor should work. 

Programmers often want the ability to greatly modify the behavior of their editor and want to be able to write extensions that add functionality to it. 

The major text editors used by programmers today, such as Emacs, Vim, Eclipse, and Visual Studio have this ability. A discussion about how their text editor would accomplish this (especially with how the design would include a place for extensions and how input would be handled) would be good.

Interview Tips



http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/Hacking_a_Google_Interview_Handout_1.pdf
When asked a question, open a dialog with the interviewer. Let them know what you are thinking.

You might, for example, suggest a slow or partial solution (let them know that the solution is not ideal), mention some observations about the problem, or say any ideas you have that might lead to a solution. 

Often, interviewers will give hints if you appear to be stuck.  

Do's
• Ask for clarification on a problem if you didn't understand something or if there is any ambiguity
• Let the interviewer know what you are thinking
• Suggest multiple approaches to the problem
• Bounce ideas off the interviewer (such as ideas for data structures or algorithms)
• If you get stuck, don't be afraid to let them know and politely ask for a hint

Don't's
• Never give up! This says nothing good about your problem solving skills.
• Don't just sit in silence while thinking. The interviewer has limited time to find out as much as possible about you, and not talking with them tells them nothing, except that you can sit there silently.
• If you already know the answer, don't just blurt it out! They will suspect that you already knew the answer and didn't tell them you've seen the question before. At least pretend to be thinking though the problem before you give the answer!

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