C++ Programming Questions to Ask on Interview (2017)

Re:C++ Programming Questions to Ask on Interview (2017) by ajross on Friday October 19, 2018 @11:17AM (#18257267)

But as mentioned multiple times, I do know heaps. I've written heaps that were deployed in production software even. Yet given a question that asks without context "Write a max heap" I'd be lost. That's not a term I know.

Conflation of terminology (about which heaps are already a terribly confusing example) with expertise is kinda the essence of why this kind of list is garbage.

And in any case, I retreat the broader point that has nothing to do with my personal vocabulary: the question wasn't even asking about how heaps work! It just wanted to know you could write a class declaration with the API.

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Re:C++ Programming Questions to Ask on Interview (2017) by stochastic_monk on Friday October 19, 2018 @02:33PM (#18258881)

I agree that the list isn’t good. I would only expect someone to know that it permits constant time access to a maximum or minimum element, and that it has a tree structure. Actually writing an implementation I would not.

A class declaration with an API (and no implementation) would be rather simple: insert, top, remove, and a constructor.

I will say that I typically hear “heap” and whether it’s max or min is largely implicit in the task, so perhaps the comparator qualification is unneeded.

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