Introduction
I met a young graduate student and we worked together on mock interview algorithms 90 minutes. I worked on Sudoku solver, and he worked on binary search Array index and Element equality. He recommended me to watch Byte to Byte video on youtube.com.
It is such a good conversation with the young graduate, we did talk about a little theory about binary search algorithm, common mistakes, base case, dead loop, and lowest index, recursive function vs iterative solution.
And we talked about more about internship, onsite interviews. I really learn a few things about young graduate student, a very good engineer and quick to write and work on coding all the time. Compared to him, I am kind of slow to get along with the peer, and not so good to work on a test case, and try to figure out things on the fly, make thing work.
One fact is that I practice binary search last 6 month over 50 times through mock interview, the peer only did once. I did see a lot of issues in the coding part. But I also learn how to judge a person with good thinking process and how to take hint and move forward. I treat the algorithm problem solving likes sports, there is no way to avoid hard work. Embrace it.
Research
Academic research is such a great topic and I wish that I have time to get into more on a topic.
One video to watch
Here is five minutes called "Increasing your creativity and solve any coding interview problem".
Spend 15 minutes to go over all possible solutions first. We should not go to optimal solution right away.
Take the time to really think and even wild ideas. What sort of things will work, what sort of things will not work.
