Last time you used a Binary Search?

yes there

moycullen14 wrote: »

I suppose this thread highlights the problem with interviews. We can't even agree on whether one topic - DNS - is important or not.

Can you imagine medical interviews along the same lines?

TB? We haven't seen it in years! It's the ERD of diseases. Now ebola - there's a 'github' of an illness. Very hipster. Tell me what you know about scrofula?

Please dont ever put hipster and program related tools in the same sentence again.

moycullen14

yes there wrote: »

Please dont ever put hipster and program related tools in the same sentence again.

ozmo

krazyklown wrote: »

I was just wondering when was the last time anyone here used a binary search implementation?
..My initial reaction was ... that it is a ridiculous question to be asking

I think its a perfectly valid thing to ask - too often I have seen crazy iterative searches through data in code - when a Hashtable/Dictionary<>/SQLIndex would have done the job in a fraction of the time.

Yes, you don't obviously write these implementations yourself - but knowing these are binary searches or similar and that coding your app to be able to use them will make all the difference with large data sets or getting a quick response on a webpage

ArseBurger

ectoraige wrote: »

What level of understanding?

Does anybody who has to send any emails need to understand SMTP? It's a foundational protocol, after all.

Somebody who works in game development doesn't need to know the details of DNS - use a library to resolve up a host, it either works, or it fails, handle the conditions. Do they really need to understand why you can't use a CNAME for an MX record? TCP? That's pretty foundational, but I don't think anybody who uses a networked computer needs to understand it though.

Actually, I would expect anybody working in the IT industry to understand all of the above. Even if they don't use it on a day to day basis.

ArseBurger

moycullen14 wrote: »

Why?

and don't say because it's important. We get that, no DNS => no internet.

Why is it important that someone has a detailed knowledge of DNS when it is not required in their day-to-day work?

I can think of dozens of things that are more important in the environments that I work in: maven, eclipse, spring, blah blah, blah

You think you don't need to understand DNS to understand how Maven, Eclipse, and Spring work? Hm.

Giblet

ArseBurger wrote: »

You think you don't need to understand DNS to understand how Maven, Eclipse, and Spring work? Hm.

Yet people use them every day without knowing! You don't need to know much of anything to code beyond the basics of the language itself. It might not make you very good or successful (not that it's stopped anyone before) but seeing as a lot of programmers don't know the language they are using very well, I don't expect to find that they also know the basics of DNS, SMTP or even what an A Record is.

Tar.Aldarion

It in no way stops people being good or successful. Somebody that never works with SMTP (or insert anything here) doesn't know how SMTP works, big deal

ArseBurger wrote: »

Actually, I would expect anybody working in the IT industry to understand all of the above. Even if they don't use it on a day to day basis.

I don't think reality will meet those expectations for the majority of people.

ozmo wrote: »

I think its a perfectly valid thing to ask - too often I have seen crazy iterative searches through data in code - when a Hashtable/Dictionary<>/SQLIndex would have done the job in a fraction of the time.

Yes, you don't obviously write these implementations yourself - but knowing these are binary searches or similar and that coding your app to be able to use them will make all the difference with large data sets or getting a quick response on a webpage

A lot of the time I use these things because I have looked it up and found out it is better to use over something else, I have no idea what is going on under the hood and for most instances I don't need to know (whereas sometimes you do and would look it up)

Idleater

Giblet wrote: »

I don't expect to find that they also know the basics of DNS, SMTP or even what an A Record is.

But it makes a nice open interview question to see the candidate's thought process. Thinking how to go about understanding a problem starts with breaking down and formulating your current understanding.

It'll help when the boss comes in with the project Yoko Ono moment "we're taking the project in a new direction"

moycullen14

ArseBurger wrote: »

You think you don't need to understand DNS to understand how Maven, Eclipse, and Spring work? Hm.

No what I said at all. My point - and I'll make it again - is that DETAILED knowledge of DNS is unimportant for most programming tasks. Rather than just contradicting me, how about you give some examples of common scenarios where DETAILED knowledge of DNS is important in day-to-day work?


If I was being interviewed and someone was focusssing on DNS, I would assume that knowledge of it was important for the job.

I can think of dozens of things in Spring, Hibernate, Maven, Eclipse et al that are FAR more important than DNS.

Berserker

Interview questions like this make me wonder. A company has a few hours to decided whether an interviewee is suitable for the job and they throw out questions like this. Personally, from a .Net perspective, I would just write a quick program with a List<T> and call the BinarySearch() on that. Five lines of code should do it. Why re-invent the wheel?