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First off, a reasonably obvious solution to the coding problem is to move nonzero elements down, and then set the remaining elements to zero. It uses one array, makes one pass, and moves each element at most one time. It was the first thing that came to my mind. There is an STL algorithm, remove(), that does most of the work, but I would have needed to look it up. If you say "I think there is an STL algorithm for this," it covers all bases whether the interviewer wants you to know the algorithm or wants you to code it by hand. It's just barely possible that in spite of your experience, you aren't a great coder, in which case the coding test worked exactly as expected.
Second, who are you to say what the best interviewing technique is? Do you have any data to back up your claim that coding interviews are broken? I hate coding tests too, but I have come to respect them:
- They catch people who are lying on their resumes. If you've ever done hiring, you know that's a big problem.
- They catch self-taught people who skipped over algorithms and data structures, if that is important to your company.
- They select people who prepped for the interview, people who really want the job.
- Over-training on algorithms for software devs is exactly like over-training on anatomy and physiology for physicians, or over-training on procedures for pilots and astronauts. It's not enough just to have seen an algorithm (or an organ, or a procedure), you need to be able to call that memory immediately to mind, even under stress situations. Coding tests select people who have really dug in and studied. and rejects people who coasted.
If you are a top company paying $200k for an engineer, this is the kind of engineer you want. If you are just writing CRUD screens, maybe this is overkill, but hey, every company wants a 10x developer if they can find one.
If you are a developer of a certain age, like me, you resent coding tests because they didn't used to be required. If you are a recent grad, the knowledge that you have to run a gauntlet of coding tests is baked into your expectations. Times change old man. Get used to it.
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Yeah dude I'm not going to *fully* respond to your angry little post. You don't know who I am or what I've done. Go insult someone else and learn some people skills what you're at it.
Jeremy Falcon
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I also followed your links on your profile and your websites look terrible. So you are clearly not qualified in the slightest to speak about frontend work. Feel free to give me some silly notion like you really didn't care about those sites. I have sites that I don't really care about that look 1,000 times better. Maybe you should look in the mirror when casting judgement bro. 
Jeremy Falcon
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Wow, talk about angry little posts (two of them).
- My web site was not designed to seek your praise. It serves me as it is.
- My answer was not designed to insult you, but to address the question of whether coding interviews are broken.
- You only want to hurl insults and not talk about the relevance of the answer. So, like whatever dude.
- I may not have the people skills needed to stroke your ego, but they are sufficient to figure out that lame code, arrogance, and self-righteousness are why you failed that interview. Humility will serve you better next time.
Best of luck on your next coding test. They aren't going away any time soon.
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Yeah... ok now. There's always one little angry dude on CP. Go run along now... go play by yourself. Nobody wants you...
Jeremy Falcon
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They cared about the details of your solution to some coding task? Yeah. Broken.
Coding questions filter out those who can't write a line of code to save their lives. Over the years I've found that filter to be quite handy.
But, for those who can code, the coding question is a forgettable formality.
It doesn't matter whether your code works well or is clever. You're just showing you can write code.
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Agreed. But anyway... gonna bow out of this thread and get back to work... we have a rouge post here filled with angst who's gonna ruin it for everyone.
Thanks for the response though. It's spot on.
Jeremy Falcon
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It is unfortunately, something that has never -not- been broken. Quite frankly, I don't see that there is a good solution to it either.
I have interviewed people for IT jobs of all kinds. Some of the candidates I have selected have been gems, others have been rancid sacks of smelly refuse. The problem for an interviewer, for even someone with a background in the area being interviewed for, is that you can have someone that looks great on paper, and even presents themselves well in interviews, but turns out to be completely ineffective on the job. On the other hand, you can have someone who would be perfect on the job, but doesn't present well. Of course, you also have the people that present well because they really are great on the job. You also have the ones that don't present well because they really aren't good.
So in the brief interactions you have with each candidate, how can you possibly determine which quadrant they fit into? It can't be done.
It is all the same as in school. There are those who endear themselves to the instructor, and seem to ace every test, but don't really know anything on the subject and couldn't apply it if they tried. Then there are those who just sit in the classroom and absorb the information almost by osmosis, understand it like it was second nature, can apply it, and in some cases even turn around and teach it to someone else; but barely scrapes by with a passing grade, and never seems to get on the instructors good graces. Sometimes there is that one kid that just struggles with everything and gets nowhere, until one day someone gives him the right help. Then suddenly it all clicks, and he gets it all and starts outperforming everyone else. When you sit in a room with these people on a daily basis, you eventually figure out who is who. You'd be hard up to identify them in the first day or two of class.
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Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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Totally agree with you. You fail on how to build install a kitchen sink test, but no one in the company installs kitchen sinks. Yep been there.
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I win again! Yay!
Last chance tomorrow, before it reverts to ... @Peter-in-2780 ... 
A threesome - predict the French red wine upset enemies at the prow! (10)
A threesome
predict FORECAST
the French LE
red wine CLARET
upset (anag)
enemies FOES
at the prow! FORECASTLE Three clues in one: all the same solution!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Thats tricky!
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Hah! You wait for tomorrows! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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So, how much time it takes you to make it? I am sure these are your own creation.
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Yesterdays took a while - I thought of the word while drifting off to sleep, and "fleshed it out" during the period between the cat jumping up and down on my bladder because he wants his breakfast and my getting up - so about an hour or so of "thinking time"
Todays was about ten minutes.
Same process: think of a word, break it up, twist it about, think about synonyms ... and then nail it all together and hack off the bits that don't work.
Tomorrows? Well, version one was about ten minutes, including some Google research to check validity.
Version two just flowed together and was complete in sixty seconds or so.
If you are interested, version one - now discarded - was "First letter of the alphabet". Want to try and solve it?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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alpha? (First letter of the Greek alphabet and start of the word 'alphabet')
or t? (first letter of 'The alphabet')
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Nope: four letters.
Very close though: the Phoenician alphabet - Wikipedia[^] predates Greek (indeed, "alpha" is derived from the Phoenician "alep") and since before Phoenician all written material was hieroglyph based, it's first letter was the solution I wanted: ALEP - first letter of any alphabet
But you'd have to be a true word nerd to know that, and ALEP isn't an English word anyway, so I decided to go with something else entirely.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: and ALEP isn't an English word anyway
And that's where Hebrew comes in handy
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Ah, the "threesome" was related to the three clues. I was desperately trying to find some connection to well, other meanings of "threesome" that could apply to naval types!
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There are other meanings? 
He said, whistling innocently ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Well,
For what it's worth, I found forecastle about 20 minutes after you posted it. But I couldn't make it fit with "A threesome -" so I stayed silent. If you would have put that above or below the clue the solution would have been posted.
I spent about another 10 minutes looking at it and couldn't make "A threesome" work. Your clue also reads as Gameplayer with a gamay wine or Hyperreal with a syrah but they didn't really fit the definition so I folded and went on about my day.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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One of a number of sources I use to track medical information (much COVID lately, of course) is disclosing a shocking discovery[^].
The actually shocking part is that they didn't assume this to be the case when the bought them.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I love the way all US systems depend on the lowest bidder for everything ...
Mind you, most UK systems are going much the same way. 
"If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys".
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Actually, back when I was a federal employee, I not only experienced but learned to love it. I also so the down side, but not what you'd expect (per your post).
Conceptually, a request is made for some services (development, for example) with the criteria for each of several requirements that must be satisfied. This includes the bidders explanation as to how they will fulfill the criteria (their view) and how much the whole thing will cost. This then is given to a group of persons knowledgeable in the field to evaluate (a points system) the fulfillment proposals (no $ amounts given). Highest point value wins.
For a product already produced, then the lowest bid meeting the specs is the winner. There's also lists of certain vendors wherein no bidding is necessary (the GSA list).
Where does it really fail? Aside from cost-plus contracts (a super scam), I was on an evaluation committee and my vote did not agree with the other four evaluators as to the best option (the other's preferred HP - I saw a serious flaw). They next level up, the contracting officer, tried to pressure me to change my evaluation so it would be unanimous and thus couldn't be appealed (or far less likely, at least). I wouldn't. That was the last time I got to look at outside proposals (until a congressional inquiry from Sen John Glenn ended up in my hands - altogether another story.)
So that kind of nonsense can spoil the system.
On the other hand - "no bid contracts" are basic cronyism at its most blatant best. Like Halliburton when we charged headlong into Iraq. Just plain big money for the heavily oil-related company (VP Cheney was from the oil industry - coincidence). Case of Coca-Cola: $400.
Or go to the private sector: where I work now. They hired a new Director in IT - and guess who's "buddies" are working on a major new contract? Worst of all, we've gone this route before. Brother-in-laws, etc. And we always get F***ed. They do have a solution, I'll bet, to get rid of in-house IT and thus no one will tell them how badly they got F***ed.
As it turns out, when you wave a lot of money around, someone will do their best to take it from you. At least monkeys work for peanuts.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I have been fortunate to have never worked in the public sector. I have extensive experience in the bidding process though, usually on the bidding side. I remember a few customers who awarded us the job(s) and then remarked, "you were actually the highest bidder but you were the only ones that demonstrated you knew what was going on." Then they stated they had gone with lowest bidders before and by the time they were done with the change orders and delays they didn't actually save anything, neither money nor time. In the end they were better off going with the best bid and that isn't always the lowest. I get the feeling one does not see that very often when government is involved.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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At least for this work, which was research, they had a bunch of us chemists and chemical engineers (and one physicist) evaluate the work. The points we gave for the requested criteria were the big deal to the contracting officers. They had a favorite, HP, and I wasn't going along.
The why: There proposal was very good in all aspects, except, one of the criteria was to do a literature search and then go from what is learned therein. They had that done, but when they went to the final criteria, they talked about doing the work on their own version. To me, this made the literature search superfluous and I therefore rated it poorly . . . and said why.
This was the US Dept of Energy. From my experience (a long time back), the only things where low-bid that meets all criteria is the dominant factor is more in the realm of tangible commodities, whether off the shelf or custom built.
One last thing: The expression "Close enough for government work" is true - but not at all for the reasons most people think. It had to do with a court case where the government wanted to reject the results. The company sued. Well, the judge ruled they were in "Substantial Compliance" and the government was forced to take them. That's how it came about: the private sector's the one who's doing a slap-shod job because they know the government will be stuck with it. This is stuff learned at a course I had to take since I might be called upon to be a tech representative at a contractor's site. I learned quite a few horrors that were forced upon the government by the courts. I won't enumerate them because I don't want to give anyone any ideas.
| Ravings en masse^ |
|---|
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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