Programming Interviews Exposed

262 Pages·2010·4.21 MB·English

Programming Interviews Exposed
Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Second Edition

John Mongan

Noah Suojanen

Eric Giguère

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Programming Interviews Exposed
Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Second Edition

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Programming Interviews Exposed
Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Second Edition

John Mongan

Noah Suojanen

Eric Giguère

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Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
Second Edition
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-12167-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Mongan, John, 1976-
Programming interviews exposed : secrets to landing your next job / John Mongan, Noah Suojanen, Eric Giguère. —
2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-12167-2 (pbk.)
1. Employment interviewing. 2. Computer programming — Vocational guidance. I. Suojanen, Noah, 1978- II. Giguère,
Eric, 1967- III. Title.
HF5549.5.I6M664 2007
650.14’4 — dc22
2007003315

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To my family

—Noah Suojanen

To those who encouraged me, living and dead

—John Mongan

To my parents, Jean-Claude and Marie-Joelle, who encouraged
and supported my love of programming

—Eric Giguère

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Credits

Acquisitions Editor
Carol Long

Development Editor
Maureen Spears

Production Editor
William A. Barton

Copy Editor
Luann Rouff

Editorial Manager
Mary Beth Wakefield

Production Manager
Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher
Joseph B. Wikert

Graphics and Production Specialists
Sean Decker
Carrie A. Foster
Jennifer Mayberry
Alicia B. South

Quality Control Technicians
John Greenough
Brian H. Walls

Project Coordinator
Erin Smith

Proofreading and Indexing
Aptara

Anniversary Logo Design
Richard Pacifico

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Acknowledgments

Putting out any book, even a second edition, requires a lot of work from many people. John and Eric
would first of all like to thank Maureen Spears, our editor, for her patience throughout this process and
the work she did in switching the book over to the WROX format. We’d also like to thank Carol Long for
spearheading the updating of the original book, and everyone else at Wiley who worked on the produc-
tion, marketing, and distribution of this book.

No second edition would have been possible without the first edition, however, and the many people
who contributed to it. For this reason, we also thank our original editors, Margaret Hendrey and
Marjorie Spencer, for their patience and helpfulness. We are also grateful to our original reviewers and
advisors, Dan Hill, Elise Lipkowitz, Charity Lu, Rob Maguire, and Tom Mongan. Dan’s contributions in
particular were tremendous — the quality of the first edition was vastly improved by his careful and
meticulous reviews.

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Contents

Acknowledgments
ix
Contents
xi
Acknowledgments
ix
Preface for the Second Edition
xvii
Preface to the First Edition
xix

Chapter 1: Before the Search
1

Know Yourself
1
Know the Market
3
Basic Market Information
3
What About Outsourcing?
3
Develop Marketable Skills
4
Sanitize Your Online Profile
5
Summary
6

Chapter 2: The Job Application Process
7

Finding and Contacting Companies
7
Networking
7
Working with Headhunters
8
Contacting the Company Directly
8
Job Fairs and Classified Ads
9
The Interview Process
9
Screening Interviews
9
On-Site Interviews
10
Dress
10
A Recruiter’s Role
11
Offers and Negotiation
12
Dealing with Recruiter Pressures
12
Negotiating Your Salary
12
Accepting and Rejecting Offers
13
Summary
14

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xii

Contents

Chapter 3: Approaches to Programming Problems
15

The Process
15
The Scenario
15
The Problems
16
Which Languages to Use
16
Interactivity Is Key
17
Solving the Questions
17
The Basic Steps
18
When You Get Stuck
19
Analyzing Your Solution
20
Analyzing Two Examples
20
How Big-O Analysis Works
21
Best, Average, and Worst Cases
22
How to Do Big-O Analysis
22
Optimizations and Big-O Analysis
23
Summary
23

Chapter 4: Linked Lists
25

Kinds of Linked List
25
Doubly-Linked Lists
27
Circularly-Linked Lists
27
Basic Linked List Operations
27
Tracking the Head Element
27
Traversing
28
Inserting and Deleting Elements
29
Linked List Problems
30
Stack Implementation
30
Maintain Linked List Tail Pointer
35
Bugs in removeHead
40
Mth-to-Last Element of a Linked List
41
List Flattening
44
List Unflattening
48
Null or Cycle
49
Summary
52

Chapter 5: Trees and Graphs
53

Trees
53
Binary Trees
55
Binary Search Trees
56
Lookup
57

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