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by mmorett
4666 days ago
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That's the $64,000 question. If I knew the answer, that would be my startup. It's a tough problem. It almost makes one beg for some sort of one-off certification (bar exam?) so we can put that to rest for ever after. I'll go out on a limb and say that most lawyers, especially the senior ones, probably couldn't pass the bar exam again. Developers have a mini bar exam every time they interview (hence the studying). That said, there's one thing you wrote I took interest in: "I've met lots of folks who talk a great game, have all kinds of experience listed on their resume, and yet somehow can't write up a linked list..." Umm...that would be me. I've never written a linked list. Guilty as charged. Java has a LinkedList class and I've never bothered to look at the implementation nor have I ever been curious enough to (re)write one from scratch. I wish you would have said "...and yet somehow don't know when to use a linked list." That moves it from an academic exercise mostly applicable to CS students who might have written one 6 months ago, to a meaningful real world scenario and more than legitimate. Choosing the appropriate data structure, knowing when and why, is both realistic and important. I don't know how a candidate can bullshit their way thru a discussion of data structures where they can articulate, accurately, which one to use, when, and why. |
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Good! You're right: the JDK's implementation is perfectly acceptable, and you'd be crazy to write your own. I certainly haven't, either.
But if you have any CS education, I'll bet you know what a linked list is at a high level. And I can probably verbally walk you through turning that into a "spec" that's good enough for a basic whiteboard implementation of one that supports a couple of basic operations. It's (hopefully) just another fizzbuzz: a simple problem to demonstrate that you can code something/anything. The overwhelming majority of applicants can't.