Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by ankrgyl on Sunday April 17, 2022 @08:54PM
(#31066130)
The question wasn't administered with the "script" laid out in the blog post. I understand why if you were just reading that, you might get confused. In practice, we had a script that walked the candidate through how to use the memcached client, explained that the command didn't exist, pointed them to the codebase, and instructed them to add the command within the codebase, so that you can issue it through the client.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by lisper on Sunday April 17, 2022 @09:19PM
(#31066284)
I see. Thanks for clarifying.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by jfrbfbreudh on Sunday April 17, 2022 @08:58PM
(#31066146)
> That is not at all clear from the problem description.
Seems like everyone else here thinks it’s perfectly clear.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by akhmatova on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:36AM
(#31070345)
It can't possibly be "clear" because it doesn't follow from the problem description. Which, verbatim, was simply this:
Our programming challenge: Add a mult command to memcached.
From the problem statement as such, you can't tell.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by db48x on Monday April 18, 2022 @05:55PM
(#31077114)
I confess to being a little confused by that. How can you “add a command to memcached” without altering memcached’s source code?
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by akhmatova on Monday April 18, 2022 @11:48PM
(#31079596)
I know nothing about memcached. But in general, out in programmingland:
"Adding a command to do X" does not imply (in general) "altering the source".
That is, there are plenty of cases where one does not need to hack the source to effectively "add a command" to the running system.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by db48x on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @08:37PM
(#31091330)
Ok, I guess you’re thinking of your shell where you can “add a command” by dropping a shell script anywhere on the disk? Or your text editor, where you can add commands by editing some config file? I guess that’s fair. Note however that each of these programs has bent over backwards to enable easy extensibility. The average program does not. This is more like adding a command to sed or grep, which have no extensibility (aside from editing their source code).
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by akhmatova on Friday April 22, 2022 @09:16AM
(#31121197)
The average program does not.
Right -- the average system does not. But that doesn't mean that every system does not. That's all I'm saying.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by jseban on Monday April 18, 2022 @03:15AM
(#31068193)
This interview will filter for people who happen to already be familiar with the memcached code base, in which the interviewer will believe he has found his genius superhero.
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by akhmatova on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:40AM
(#31070390)
Exactly. Like all these other "gee-whiz" filter questions.
You problem setup seems to assume that your interviewee is compeltely unfamiliar with memcached. So how do you expect someone to be able to answer this question if you haven't told them how to add commands to memcached?
[UPDATE] Ah, I see you actually want them to go hack on the memcached code base. That is not at all clear from the problem description. The language of the problem setup is pretty elementary. I think anyone who is actually capable of doing this task would find the description pretty condescending.