Hack the programming interview

List of topics that come up alot in interviews

2010-04-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of topics I personally got asked a lot about during my interviewing periods.
This is just a partial list,
I left out important topics like design questions and logical puzzles.
I hope to get to that in the near future , and give more concrete questions and solutions.
But if you've got these topics under your belt, you are are in a good position.

Threads:
Threads are a favorite of interviewers , even in places places that don't use threads.
Some common question might be :What is a deadlock, give an example, solve it.
What is Mutex, semaphore
Thread life cycle (start, wait, sleep, join…)
thread pool
What is the difference between thread and process.

Design patterns:
Every interviewer wants to see you cough up code for 2 design patterns (for some reason, they never ask for more then 2 ), the ones that come up most frequently are:
Singleton
Observer
MVC – model view controller
Factory

OOD:
You must be familiar with the inside out of object oriented design, be prepared for some of these:
what is a Static function\ variable
define 3 components of object oriented design (hint, Polymorphism, encapsulation)
what is the differece between an abstract class and an interface?

C \ C++
Naturally, c\c++ questions tend to be more "low level", for example:
write a Pointer to function.
Implement: itoa,atoi
many trick questions on pointers, by reference by value….
Struct
what is the difference between Alloc\malloc\calloc
what is a Virtual method , draw a virtual table , what is a Pure virtual method?
templates
const pointer (const int * a\ int cont * a)
Implement a string class, including ctr, dtr, copy ctr
when would you use a virtual dtr, ctr?
Bit manipulation tricks.

Java:
Some common java question might be:
difference between Map \ hashmap \ hashtable,
Exceptions usage and best practices,
how would you implement the garbage collector.

Algorithms:
Here is a list of usefull algorithms (for interviews, not for programming)
trie
Reverse linked list, recursive and not.
Print binary tree by level
Print the Nth level of a tree
Print tree depth
Find circles in a linked list
Replace 2 vars, not using a third one.
Change bit number k in a number from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1
reverse order of words in a sentence

2010-03-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

Today I am going to share with you some of my favorite websites where you can find thousands of technical interview questions, I have a tendency to prefer java but I wont leave out any language,
so here we go :

http://www.geekinterview.com/Interview-Questions
A comprehensive site with medium quality questions on all the IT spectrum, from databases and C# to management and soft skills.

http://dev.fyicenter.com/interview/index.html
Also comprehensive with a good variety of technical questions

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/cs.shtml
This site has logical riddles according to difficulty level and a "CS" section for more programming related questions, the answers are in the forum.

http://www.developersbook.com/interview-questions-faqs.php
Mainly java related interview questions but not only

http://www.codestyle.org/java
Short, but has some good java questions

http://www.jobhunt.co.il/interviews_db.php
Has a list of interview questions by company , and a forum for people to post questions they have been asked in interviews, in Hebrew (my native language).

http://techinterview.org/index.html
mainly logical riddles like involving coins, trains, liars etc...

first!!!

2010-03-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

This site is dedicated to all my fellow programmers .
We all went through the job interview process and have been asked meaningless syntax questions like
what does # mean in CSS, or required to implement complex graph traversing recursive algorithms in O(sqrt n). While both questions are unrelated to how good a programmer you are, we all need to be prepared for them.

In this blog I will attempt to provide the best resources available for preparing to programming job interviews.
There are many IT jobs out there, but how many of them are interesting, conveniently located, pay well and most importantly , willing to hire you?
In order to give programmers the best chances of landing the job they desire, I will share reviews, algorithms , links, books, blogs,podcasts and more that I found helpful during the times I myself were looking for a cool programming job.

p.s.
If someone reading this has reviews ,questions ,links to useful material, feel free to share with me and I will post it.