Problem Solving

In this episode, we are going to learn about problem solving and specifically how to approach solving a problem during an interview and various other technical aspects that are important from an interview point of view.

Imagine you are sitting in a technical interview. The interviewer has asked you to solve a coding problem. How do you think should you approach? Should you straight away start writing the code? Definitely not. First and foremost, it is important for you to ask clarifying questions regarding the problem statement given to you. Make sure you thoroughly understand the problem in question before you start thinking of ways in which it can be solved. Your communication skills are extensively to be used at this point in time of your interview.

Once you are clear with the problem statement, go through the sample data and examples thoroughly. After that, start communicating your ideas to the interviewer. Begin with the naive or the brute force way of solving the problem. Then, explain the alternative ways you have considered to solve the problem and how the algorithm can be optimised. The efficiency of the solution proposed by you is inferred by performing asymptotic analysis. In this analysis, we evaluate the performance of an algorithm in terms of input size. Essentially, we calculate, how the time or space taken by an algorithm increases with the input size. While describing your approach, you could write a pseudo-code for the problem. After your interviewer is satisfied with your approach, then you could move on to write the code for the same in your preferred programming language. While doing so, discuss the sample data or test cases with the interviewer. Before, submitting your final solution make sure that your code runs for every possible input including the edge cases.

See you in the next one.

Wish you a great success !

Vaidhyanathan S M