Coding Interview Tips

Hey villagers. I’ve recently been applying for software engineering roles and as expected, they all have one or more technical interviews. I’ve been practicing on the usual sites like Leetcode, Hackerrank, GeeksforGeeks and Codewars. Plus reading Cracking the Coding Interview, Programming Interviews Exposed and Elements of Programming Interviews. Most people have told me that knowing data structures and algorithms plus practicing interview problems is all I need but I’m barely seeing any progress. When I revisit past problems I realize that I’ve forgotten most of the solutions. Do anyone have some advice for me to improve? Thanks!

Pass

Never ever memorise coding…just never do it. Strive to understand stuff

Very true. Especially in this information age. Understand stuff. The details can always be googled.

nice one…And if i may ask, when is the right time to apply for a job incase one is self-taught?? how do you know when you’re good?

As long as someone can lay out a plan…even if its pseudo code thats what matters

Aplying for a job if you are self taught may prove difficult since you may be disqualified by virtue of your papers being inadequate I.e before you are even interviewed especially in these big multinationals where its worth it being employed. However you may be able to get jobs on a contract basis if you are known and have proven your worth elsewhere.

Software dev is a continuos learning process. But if you can understand the programming concepts and aplly them in different languages in an OOP style, then you are good

thank you

I would say for an interview practice whiteboarding. Do 2/3 programming exersices on a piece of paper/whiteboard. Serious interviewers will likely ask you to solve something on a whiteboard

If you understand your data structures well enough, all you need now is to tune your logic and solve the problem. It’s all down to understanding. Pro tip: Try doing a single coding challenge in different languages and see what works for you

Learn to solve problems and you will never worry about any interview questions. Most interviewers want to test the ability to solve problems not cramming stuff.

You can practice with all examples in the world but still fail if you don’t understand how to break down a large problem into small bits and sequentially develop a solution.

Writing the code comes last … this is a good place to start - https://codeburst.io/10-steps-to-solving-a-programming-problem-8a32d1e96d74

Nice share Njengah. Thanks.
I recently joined a company where I was introduced to Test Driven Development i.e write tests for my functionality first,watch them fail then write the actual code and run tests till they pass. This was a steep learning curve personally but I’m beginning to like it i.e fewer bugs… actually only logical flaws now.

What are your thoughts on TDD and testing(both unit tests and TDD) in general