Interview Questions
I’ve been taking part in conducting a number of technical interviews lately, and while I enjoy talking about side projects and other peeks into a candidates personality, I’m primarily interested in the really low level algorithmic detail. One of my favorites is quite simple, really. Given the following string:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Write a function that takes that string as an input and spits out the word that occurs most often. Obviously the word is the and it’s always immediately evident based on a candidate’s response whether or not he/she is a junior or a senior-level developer.
A junior-level candidate will hem and haw and stumble and hesitate. A senior-level candidate will confidently begin, and while there may be a few fumbles along the way, it’s readily apparent whether or not a candidate at least knows the approach.
Posted by Ron Dollete on Friday, February 18, 2011