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Comment by throwaway_a0f1 | Hacker News Reader

I mean that's a fair take, and one I've tried really hard to examine, but I feel as though the questions have a very obvious answer and you either get it or don't. And to reply to that, no one actually gives feedback so you'll never actually know.

Looking at your profile, you seem well suited to be able to evaluate this, so let me give an example from an interview I just had.

Here's a problem and solution from the last interview I had: https://pastebin.com/LyVYqLv4

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Python: uses underscores. Java, Javascript: camelcase. .NET: Capitalize. And so forth, those are the conventions that professionals use, so stick to them for an interview.

`biggestSize = 99999999 #MaxInt` This is returned if the caller passes you 0 for slicesToFind, so you're returning a nonsense value in that case. Either raise an exception (preferred as it catches errors fast) or return None.

`def area(size)` You're using pi r^2, so size is a radius, but it seems you call it with a diameter. This is why choosing distinct names is very important.

`newSize = (originalSize / newSlicesInCake)` Again, using "size" all over the place is confusing. I'd write something like `new_slice_area = (original_cake_area / new_slice_count)`.

Thanks for feedback about convention and variable naming- you're totally correct I should work on both.

As far as 0 input, they actually told me it would always be valid so edge cases were not accounted for.

I personally think you had a strong answer despite the criticisms mentioned.

But, yeah. Casing convention was surprisingly important in one of my interviews. They wanted to know that I was able to adapt to a new language as the job was for a language I didn't have on my resume. It's weird, but I understand where they're coming from. Seeing improper styling in a code review is an immediate red flag and an interview problem is ultimately a code review.

Looks good to me. You are right, it's hard to say what's going wrong when nobody gives feedback. Often if you do well on 4 problems and then tank the 5th, that can be enough to miss out. I think if you can regularly solve this difficulty of problem you should be able to get a job though.

Would you mind emailing me whatever resume-ish stuff you have at my hn username at gmail? Maybe I can give more specific help.

Done, really appreciated

FWIW, if you want feedback on working code, Stack Overflow has a sister site Code Review[0] where people will critique your code and give lots of useful feedback. It's a pretty welcoming community so long as you're looking for a code review and not debugging help.

[0] https://codereview.stackexchange.com/

Ca anybody explain to me the problem definition? (not the solution)

Apparently this is a common question.

Here's some discussion on it https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/348510/Googl...

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