How To Crack Coding Interview

Understand This Keyword Well

In JavaScript, we always compose code with functions and objects. If you take the browser, in the global context it refers to the window object. I mean this will evaluate to true if you open browser console right now and enter this.

this === window 

When the context and scope of program changes, this at that particular point changes accordingly. Now see this in a local context is:

function Foovar food =  Foo.call  // food is this

Now you will be tempted to predict this output.

function Foo?}

Nope, it wont. Because this is a global object here. Remember, whatever parent scope is, it will be inherited by the child. So it prints the window object. The three methods we discussed are actually used to set this object.

Now comes the last type of this. this in object scope. Here

var person =      }}

I just used getter syntax which is a function that can be called as a variable.

person.identity  // returns 

Here, this is actually referring to the object itself. this as we previously mentioned behaves differently in different places. Know them well.

Work On Software Design Skills

Coding interviews are not just about coding questions but also about solving problems on software and system designs. These questions throw candidates off their feet due to their complexity. It is very important as a fresher to understand software design and the development process as it would definitely make you stand out from the array of competitors.

Database Design And Sql

As a software developer, working with a relational database is a critical skill that youll need, and it will stick with you no matter where you are in your career. Every company from small to large uses a DBMS, so its likely that you will come across different data models, type so databases , and dependencies on various companies.Knowing how to structure your data within a DBMS is critical. Should you use an entity-relationship , model? A hierarchical model? A three-schema architecture?

The choices can be intimidating, but its good to know about the different ways to structure your data as that when you switch database vendors like from Oracle to SQL Server or PostgreSQL, you can plugin with minimal hand-coding.As a programmer, you should also know about SQL, not just the syntax but also how the database actually runs your query and how joins are executed, how to index are used, and the difference between table scan, index scan, and index seek. These details are not just important from the coding interview perspective but also from day-to-day jobs. If you need resources, I suggest you go through with Database Design Fundamentals for Software Engineers, where you will learn about the different concepts and techniques you can use to structure your data and explore why you should use particular approaches for certain problems.

I also suggest reading SQL Performance Explained book by Markus Winand book to better understand how SQL query works in general.

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Weeks 6 7 8 Practice More Complex Coding Interview Problems

Now that youve been practicing more straightforward problems for a couple of weeks, its time to get real and start practicing harder questions that are more likely to be asked during coding interviews.

For practice and automated challenges along with interactive solutions, look at Grokking the Coding Interview

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind as you solve these problems:

Here are some sample problems to consider:

• Implement Binary Search
• Find the Intersection point of two linked lists
• Reverse words in a sentence
• Check if two binary trees are identical
• Clone a directed graph
• Find solutions to a Boggle game
• Determine if there are any three integers in an array that sum equal to the given value.

Topics You Must Prepare

If you are going for the interview for the first time then there are certain topics that you should definitely cover. Apart from this, it is always recommended to take mock tests to sharpen your skills. Now, we are going to head towards the topics which are mandatory to prepare for your SQL interview.

• You should have knowledge of tables and fields and know how to organize one.
• Go through the definitions of database and DBMS.
• Difference between DBMS and RDBMS.
• Explain different constraints in SQL.
• What do you know about primary keys?
• About joins, views, functions, transactions, locking, stored procedures, table variants
• Difference between the clustered index and non-clustered index.
• Have knowledge about pivoting, updating, or deleting data by using joins, ROW_NUMBER, RANK, grouping, etc.
• How to delete duplicate records.
• Difference between SQL and no-SQL databases.
• Examples from real life on SQL and no SQL databases.
• Nested queries
• Normalization, Partition, Acid, the significance of different keys are also important. Real-life problems in the design

No matter how proficient you are practically in SQL but don’t take the interview so lightly. Along with practical knowledge, theoretical knowledge is also important to crack any interview. We have talked about certain topics that you can prepare and can also get sure for your selection by preparing more interview questions on SQL and by giving mocks.

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Cracking The Google Coding Interview: The Definitive Prep Guide

Note: This post was originally published in 2020 has been updated as of Oct. 28, 2021

Passing the Google interview is any software developers dream. This interview is the ultimate test of your technical prowess and requires not luck or shortcuts but hard work and preparation. Luckily, Google is very transparent about their expectations for candidates. The more you know about Googles process and company culture, the more likely you are to succeed. So today, well take a deep dive into their coding and behavioral interview process to show you how to crack the interview.

Today we will go over the following:

How To Crack Python Developer Interview

Whether you are a fresher or experienced in both terms you have to prove your skills. The basic agenda of cracking any interview is to prove yourself best among all the aspirants standing in the queue. In this article, we are going to discuss cracking the interview for the python developer designation. If you are also one among those aspirants who are looking for the best study material then these python programming questions will help you in cracking the interview. These small preparation tips will help you in increasing your knowledge, boosting your morale, and getting more closer to success.

Python is one of the most productive and most used languages. There is always a high demand for python developers in companies. To crack the interview of python it is necessary for the applicants to prepare and focus more on Coding. You should practice yourself daily to solve at least two coding questions in a day.

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Overview Of Google Interviews

The whole interview process takes 2 to 2.5 months to complete. Google interviews for software developers consist of 5 to 7 interviews in total. This includes an initial phone screen with a Google recruiter, followed by 4 to 6 on-site interviews with different Google employees. All coding challenges are done on a whiteboard, Google Docs, or a Chromebook.

Google normally hires at level T3 with T11 being the height of levels. T3 is an entry-level, full-time software engineer with an undergraduate or Masters degree. The average salary for a T3 employee is $117,000 annually. Google prefers the following programming languages: Java, C++, C Go, and Python.

There are three types of coding problems you can expect to see in a Google interview.

• System design questions: these questions gauge your ability to handle high-level system design with scalability in mind.

• Coding interview challenges: these questions gauge your knowledge of data structures and algorithms to optimize a solution to common problems.

• General analysis questions: these questions gauge your thought process through mathematical or opinion-based questions

Coding Interview Practice Questions On Arrays

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Now Youre Ready For The Coding Interview

These are some of the most common questions outside of data structure and algorithms that help you to do really well in your interview.

I have also shared a lot of these questions on my blog, so if you are really interested, you can always go there and search for them.

These common coding, data structure, and algorithm questions are the ones you need to know to successfully interview any company, big or small, for any level of programming job.

If you are looking for a programming or software development job in 2019, you can start your preparation with this list of coding questions and if you are ready for an Interview then you can also take TripleBytes quiz and go directly to the final round of interviews with top tech companies like Coursera, Adobe, Dropbox, Grammarly, and many more.

Listen To Every Detail

When interviewing, write down every detail of the problem to reference whenever you get stuck.

When in your mock interviews , practice your attentive listening.

Coding interviews are interactive an exchange of coding interview questions between the between the interviewer and interviewee. As such, you need to pay attention. Your active listening reveals the intelligence and inquisitiveness they are looking for.

When listening to a problem, you need to pay attention to all of the details. This is like gathering the ingredients to a recipe: youre not using it all in the first step.

When you listen to a problem, you need to be absolutely certain you heard it correctly so that you are not off to the races solving the wrong problem. Ask questions. Repeat it back. Asking for clarification is encouraged.

It is unlikely that the interviewer will give you information that does not relate to the problem.

Cracking the Coding Interview says:

Many candidates will hear the problem correctly. But ten minutes into developing an algorithm, some of the key details of the problem have been forgotten. Now they are in a situation where they actually cant solve the problem optimally.

If you find yourself stuck, ask yourself if you used all of the information in the problem.

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Draw A Specific And Sufficiently Large Example

Create examples that cover a generic case and not an overly simplified one.

In your mock interviews, as every first step to solving your problem, you need to draw an example. The author of Cracking the Coding Interview cautions that interviewees commonly draw bad examples.

What is a bad example? They are too small and do not sufficiently convey a common case for the problem scenario.

The book illustrates a tree with only two branches: three cells in total. That tree is not sufficient for the problem space.

It is also possible for you to draw an example that later turns out isnt quite right.

But in a technical interview, everything can be adjusted. Go back and fix your example.

Aws Docker And Kubernetes

While these five are definitely must-have skills for coding interviews, employers are nowadays also looking for modern tech skills like AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes, which makes them important topics for technical interviews.

Since cloud computing is the next big thing and this decade of software development will be cloud-native, it’s better for a software developer to know about Cloud and modern deployment tools like Docker and Kubernetes.

This is also important if you want to stay ahead of the curve and give a reason to your employer to hire you than the next candidate in line. For AWS and Cloud, one more thing you can do is to get a certification, not because you can’t get a job without certification but to learn better and get recognition for your skill.

For AWS, I suggest you at least have an AWS Cloud Practitioner certification to showcase necessary cloud skills, and if you prefer Microsoft Azure, then Azure Fundamentals is an excellent certification to start with.

Docker is a container, which allows you to run your application as a whole, along with all the dependencies. This makes both development and deployment easier, particularly for Microservices. Since the container makes cloud deployment more manageable, they are also easier for the manager to scale up and down.

Kubernetes is a container orchestration tool, which means it can use manager containers at scale.

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Coding Interviews are such an important thing in a programmer’s life that he just can’t get away with that. It’s the first hurdle they need to cross to get the software developer job they wish throughout their school and college days.

To make the matter worse, you will find that so many people on the internet telling that coding interview is flawed, the hiring process for programmers sucks and so on but you don’t need to pay attention to them, not at least at the start of your career.

They may be right but they are inside the train which you are trying to get into. No matter, how much they criticize the coding interviews and programmers’ hiring process, many of them have gone through the same route to where they are.

We all know that Coding Interview System is not perfect and many are trying to change it but until it’s changed, you got to follow its rules to get into the System. This is something for experience developers to deal with, as a junior developer your priority should be to clear the coding interview and get the job you want.

In this article, I am going to share with you top 101 coding interview problems from programming job interviews which every programmer should know.

Important Tips For Coding Interviews And Getting A Job

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