Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by mikeryan on Sunday April 17, 2022 @09:42PM
(#31066409)
What this comes down to is can the candidate: figure out how to build the project, grep to existing implementation and copy, paste, change a plus to an asterisk. And also, can they articulate the work-to-be-done this simply.
While that’s the gist of it, it hardly seems that’s quite enough from the author’s solution, nor should it be enough for an interviewer. The question isn’t how to write, or copy paste a function but how to add the command interface as well which, if one doesn’t know memcached, can be more complex then the function itself and isn’t covered by this trite an answer.
https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2022/01/07/memcached-inte...
There already exists a function that does the exact thing the question asks for, handling all the atomicity complexity.
What this comes down to is can the candidate: figure out how to build the project, grep to existing implementation and copy, paste, change a plus to an asterisk. And also, can they articulate the work-to-be-done this simply.
I've never seen the first item in that list tested in an interview and .. I don't hate the idea.