Binary search practice

Sept. 22, 2017

Introduction

I had a mocking at 10:00 pm and then I was told to write the program to find a number using binary search. I failed 5 out of 6 test cases, index out of range, and then I was told to comment out the code of binary search function, and then nail down the bug related to implicit typing "var" on line 47.

Algorithm practice 

My binary search practice is here.

Coding with style 

I spent almost 40 minutes to chat with the peer about coding. I really like the conversation between two programmers. I advised the peer to write self-documented code, in other words, do not write variable name l, h which l stands for low and h stands for high. Express the intent, define a meaningful explanation variable. And also I advised the peer to do whiteboard testing, and showed him an example, run the code line by line and execute the code with the result calculated by myself.

Write simple and clean code

The peer asked me how I can have so much time to play hackerrank contest, ask code review algorithm questions, and then write blogs.

I shared a few things:

1. The blog I did code review for myself, the triangle algorithm.

2. Edit distance dynamic programming post on quora.com. The link is here.

Thoughts after mocking

I think that writing coding blog is easier compared to write code at work. To ask a question on code review website is also easy compared to solve problems at work. I think that the experience of writing blogs is very rewarding experience, my blog is becoming my best reading library.