Re:How I went from failing every interview to a job at Amazon
by majormajor on Sunday April 30, 2017 @07:14PM
(#14234417)
> the fast elegant solution that doesn't fall over in obscure corner cases
This can go both ways, though. Sometimes the fast elegant solution is too elegant for the nasty corner cases and a much bigger, uglier, but ultimately straightforward procedural block of crap is better.
The examples I've seen are from established businesses that occasionally slipped up in refactoring out hacks that were introduced to support deadline-driven requirements. A year or two later, that hack is powering the reporting for a huge portion of the traffic, and you have to be able to balance between (a) writing maintainable code that supports the hack for the short term and (b) working with the rest of the business to clean up the requirements so you can improve the system for the long term.
(b) is a skill that most interview processes I've seen completely ignore. And (a) often is downplayed (as "simple" or "easy") compared to more clever tricks - but knowing how to do the clever tricks might turn into a temptation to use them more than you should.
This can go both ways, though. Sometimes the fast elegant solution is too elegant for the nasty corner cases and a much bigger, uglier, but ultimately straightforward procedural block of crap is better.
The examples I've seen are from established businesses that occasionally slipped up in refactoring out hacks that were introduced to support deadline-driven requirements. A year or two later, that hack is powering the reporting for a huge portion of the traffic, and you have to be able to balance between (a) writing maintainable code that supports the hack for the short term and (b) working with the rest of the business to clean up the requirements so you can improve the system for the long term.
(b) is a skill that most interview processes I've seen completely ignore. And (a) often is downplayed (as "simple" or "easy") compared to more clever tricks - but knowing how to do the clever tricks might turn into a temptation to use them more than you should.