Cracking the Coding Interview3 Notes

• http://www.careercup.com/

The following approach:

• Examine the code and understand what it's expected to do. Ask your interviewer what types of data it's expected to handle, where it'll be used. etc.
• Look for syntax errors: does everything type check? is the class declaration correct?
• Look for "hot spots":
  • If you see float and doubles, check for precision errors
  • If you see division, check for rounding errors
  • If you see memory allocation, check for memory leaks
  • If you see unsigned ints, check to see if the int might ever be negative
  • If you see bit manipulation, check for correctness
• Run through the code with a few examples:
  • The "normal" case
  • The boundary cases(null, 0, 1, MAX, etc)
• Does it do everything it's expected to? For example, if the code is supposed to return everyone in a database under 21, does it only look for students? Maybe it should be looking for teachers as well?
• Does it handle unexpeced cases? What if it takes in a list and it has a loop?