I’m going to begin posting weekly a technical interview question. Generally, each question should be solvable in less than 30 minutes time. Often, much less. Some amount of coding is typically necessary to solve the problem (either actual code or pseudo-code), but occasionally, just a plan or discussion-style response is expected. <\/p>\n
I’d consider these questions to be of the Microsoft technical interview style questions (having worked there, I both was interviewed and interviewed others, so I have some experience with them). If nothing else, you might find them interesting problems to think about for a couple of moments during your day. That’s my primary reason for posting them: a little brain teaser during your day. <\/p>\n
I’d really like to see who can answer them first, BUT<\/strong>, given the nature of the Internet and time zones — it’s not really practical. If you have an answer that you’d like to show off and you have a blog, put the answer on your blog, and link to the question and post a comment (if trackbacks aren’t working). Otherwise, feel free to post the answer in the comment. There often will be more than one answer!<\/p>\n Code it in any language you’re comfortable with! There’s no right or wrong language for these questions (unlike many interviews at Microsoft that have historically considered C\/C++ the "only" language you should use).<\/p>\n By the way, a long answer isn’t necessarily a "wrong" answer, but it’s probably not the best answer. :)<\/p>\n (I’ll go as long as I can with the series … if you have questions you’d like to see added, feel free to contact me using the contact form in the header, or send an e-mail to coder<\/strong> at this website).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m going to begin posting weekly a technical interview question. Generally, each question should be solvable in less than 30 minutes time. Often, much less. Some amount of coding is typically necessary to solve the problem (either actual code or pseudo-code), but occasionally, just a plan or discussion-style response is expected. I’d consider these questions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5QIe-24","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":349,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/349","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":0},"title":"Technical Interview Series","date":"June 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've created nine technical interview questions so far as part of my ongoing series. Just as a reminder, each question should be solvable in less than 30 minutes time (sometimes less). Some amount of coding is typically necessary to solve the problem (either actual code or pseudo-code), but occasionally, just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1340,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1340","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":1},"title":"Nest Thermostat Review, Update #1","date":"December 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After a few weeks of using the Nest thermostat, I\u2019ve got a few more comments that I\u2019d like to share. (Here\u2019s my post about the installation). The learning feature honestly hasn\u2019t been very useful in the first few weeks. It\u2019s apparently easily confused by days that you're home unexpectedly (for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"image","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/image_thumb3.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":175,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/175","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":2},"title":"What’s the perfect API?","date":"May 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was skimming a rant by someone on arstechnica about how badly messed up Win32 APIs are and how superior everything else is, when this paragraph grabbed my attention: The reason must be that no one in Microsoft actually gives a damn. Each group develops their own UI widgets in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1382,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1382","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":3},"title":"Nest Thermostat Review, Update #4","date":"January 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Update #6, Update #5, Update #4, Update #3, Update #2, Update #1, Install A bit more about my Nest thermostat experiences. On the weekend, I spoke with a support engineer from Nest regarding the issue I was having with one of the Nest units failing to properly read the room\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/image_thumb.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":370,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/370","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":4},"title":"Technical Interview Question\/Coding Challenge #10","date":"June 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm renaming the series of interview questions to be \"Coding Challenges.\" Rules are still the same: you have about 30 minutes from start to finish for each question. The amount of code necessary to solve a problem is one or two whiteboards of reasonable sized handwriting (20-100 lines of code).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Coding"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1749,"url":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1749","url_meta":{"origin":128,"position":5},"title":"Nest Update #12: Software at 3.0 with New Features","date":"October 3, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As the blogosphere exploded yesterday with news of a second generation Nest thermostat and a new major version of the software (for the thermostats and the controllers such as the web site and various SmartPhones), I wondered what impact the new software and hardware would have on average users, like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Recommendations"","img":{"alt_text":"IMG_0630","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/IMG_0630.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/wpjson\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}