Being an interviewer: Sudoku solver

April 21, 2018

Introduction

It is my 10:00 AM mock interview. The peer worked on Sudoku solver, and then he chose swift language. What he did is to check given numbers on the board are following the rules - row/ column, small grid 3 x 3 matrix not duplicate.

The code he wrote for preprocessing is kind of buggy, so we started to talk and communicate on this piece of code. And then I told him that most of people do not do this preprocessing.

The interviewee wrote code but could not pass the test case, and then I walked through the code, and pointed out on line 18, variable name i is used the second time.

Code review 

Here is the swift code I reviewed for the peer as well. The code passed all test cases.

I gave the advice to write readable code, use meaningful variable names, and also I advised the peer to communicate more with the interviewer. I told him that I met a young master graduate, who was preparing Google onsite, and then he got offer. When I mocked interview him, he kept asking me "am I in right check", "do you think that my coding looks ok", he has determined goal, to write code to pass all test cases he prepared, he likes to develop a complete solution in less than 30 minutes.

I had a small chat with the peer who is preparing Uber phone screen. The peer got the Amazon offer but chose another offer a few years ago. Interesting story, a small world, stay anonymous, smart and hard working young programmer.

Swift means sweet

Feb. 11, 2018

Introduction

Swift language is chosen by young generation programmers and they like to work on ios app etc. I was explained by the peer through the mock interview. I rated that the peer is one of top performer in my last 160 peers last eleven months.

It is my decision to start a new round of mock interview using ID: beet after I finished the round using ID: apple. I also chose to interview using Swift language, since I practiced one time with a peer using Go, I like to learn new things and stay out of my comfortable zone this round.

This is the first time over 160 mock interview that I met a peer who used Swift in the mock interview. As a matter of fact, he was the first person who asked me to give him time to look at his algorithm before I started to code my algorithm Leetcode 10: regular expression matching.

And also the peer shared his Swift code of Leetcode 10 after I performed my algorithm. And then the peer told me that he solved the problem differently, and I asked him to explain it to me. And then I had chance to learn Swift language from him, and also I had chance to ask question on the implementation. I learned to ask questions and identify the recursion zero time, one time or more than one time in the code. I was so surprised that I just learned a new way to solve the problem. It is an iterative way, and it is to go over pattern string and perfect solution. I really enjoyed the learning.

Swift code

It is kind of sweet for me to learn a new language. I learn starting from my most favorite algorithm. I just could not believe that the teaching and learning can happen so quickly.

Here is the swift code. I added comments to highlight the b* pattern repetition zero time, one time or more than one time.