<story><title>The Programming Interview from Hell</title><url>http://pythonforengineers.com/the-programming-interview-from-hell/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kppiskingpp</author><text>linked list is not complex for christ sake.</text></item><item><author>mankyd</author><text>I interviewed someone who gave responses akin to &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;d Google it.&amp;quot; When presssed, he did finally give some reasonable answers.&lt;p&gt;We ended up hiring him, as we&amp;#x27;d interviewed 10 other candidates who&amp;#x27;d failed at that point.&lt;p&gt;He ended up being a terrible employee.&lt;p&gt;Seriously, when someone asks you the details of a linked list, they&amp;#x27;re not trying to find out if you will be able to use one specifically on the job. They&amp;#x27;re trying to figure out if you know how to implement the details of a moderately tricky algorithm&amp;#x2F;data structure.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never implemented a linked list for work, but I have implemented complex data structures and other analogous code. Implementing a linked list demonstrates that I paid attention to the basics and can reconstitute mildly complex algorithms when needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mankyd</author><text>Tell that to the 1000&amp;#x27;s of people who can&amp;#x27;t implement them.&lt;p&gt;I agree, its not that hard, but that&amp;#x27;s all the more reason to avoid giving attitude about the question. Answer it quickly and move on. If you can&amp;#x27;t answer it quickly, maybe it _is_ that complex.&lt;p&gt;A lot of interviewers have a short time window in which to conduct their 1-on-1. Sometimes they ask easy questions for a reason.&lt;p&gt;Often, I start with a soft ball that I intend on building on - turn a linked list into a doubly linked list; a circular list; can you improve the lookup time; can you make it generic; what are the space constraints; what are the time constraints.&lt;p&gt;And if they can&amp;#x27;t answer the simple question, we just leave it at that.&lt;p&gt;A simple question can easily be built upon. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;d Google it&amp;quot; can not.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Programming Interview from Hell</title><url>http://pythonforengineers.com/the-programming-interview-from-hell/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kppiskingpp</author><text>linked list is not complex for christ sake.</text></item><item><author>mankyd</author><text>I interviewed someone who gave responses akin to &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;d Google it.&amp;quot; When presssed, he did finally give some reasonable answers.&lt;p&gt;We ended up hiring him, as we&amp;#x27;d interviewed 10 other candidates who&amp;#x27;d failed at that point.&lt;p&gt;He ended up being a terrible employee.&lt;p&gt;Seriously, when someone asks you the details of a linked list, they&amp;#x27;re not trying to find out if you will be able to use one specifically on the job. They&amp;#x27;re trying to figure out if you know how to implement the details of a moderately tricky algorithm&amp;#x2F;data structure.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never implemented a linked list for work, but I have implemented complex data structures and other analogous code. Implementing a linked list demonstrates that I paid attention to the basics and can reconstitute mildly complex algorithms when needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>base698</author><text>I think the original intent of the linked list question was to see if the candidate knew pointers.  Implementing in a non pointer language would be trivial and definitely not complex.</text></comment>