Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by TobTobXX on Monday April 18, 2022 @05:37AM
(#31068840)
That's the problem: Since only incr and decr exist, a bool is enough to say which of these two operatios should be done. But when you add a third, the bool isn't enough. So you either change the opcode to an int, like the autor, or branch the mul instruction away above like above solution.
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Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by cletus on Monday April 18, 2022 @07:25AM
(#31069355)
Two rules I learned early that served me well:
1. If you don't do arithmetic on it and it's not a primary key then it's not a number (eg an employee number might be "123456" but it's a string not a number); and
2. It's almost never a boolean; it's an enum.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had to change a boolean to an enum (some of which I created in the first place).
My favourite hack for this is when someone decides to add a third value to a boolean with:
Optional<Boolean> foo
@nullable Optional<Boolean> foo
Re:The best engineering interview question I've ever gotten
by db48x on Monday April 18, 2022 @05:34PM
(#31076884)
Yea, I would prefer an enum over an int to choose the operation, but don’t forget that this is C, where enums _are_ ints. Oh well.
Also, that it turns out there is already an enum to extend for the binary protocol, so the blog author reused that instead of making a new one just for the this one function.