Microsoft internship…part II

26 10 2008

This is sequel to the post

http://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/microsoft-internshipsome-vodka-please/

Round 1: Written round
The results to the written C Apti round were announced overnight. 27 people out of 101 got selected. Here are the questions of the C apti:

a)A recurssions problem, just needed some patience

b)given a function parser(char *) which parses the input string. Write all the possbile test cases for it.

c)You have been given a memory space to work with.You only know its base address and size. You cannot use more memory. Write a function for Void * Allocate(int ) and void Delete(Void *)

d)Given two linked lists, each conatining a digit of a very  long number. Subtract the two numbers and return a linked list which contains the difference, with each node containing one digit

The questions required some thinking and the implementations were not rigourously tested.Not very tough, but a challenging round

Round 2:Logic and implementation
The next round was a group process. 27 members were divided into groups of 4 each, each group having a mentor. All of them were made to be seated in a single room.The process was simple. One question would be given and everyone has to think about its implementation and discuss the answer with his/her mentor. When the mentor gives the go ahead, you have to implement it after which the mentor would check your code and give test conditions.

There were two such questions with half an hour each for each question. The questions were as follows:

a)Given input binary tree and a number, find the path from the root to leaves such that the path sum is equal to the given number

b)Given input a Char *.It contains alphanumeric + special symbols. Every special symbol has to be replced by”_(its ASCII)_”

for example, assume ASCII of $ is 32(I dont remember the exact values, its a pain to remember ASCII table), then

Input: A$BED

Output String:A_32_BED

The constraint here being only limited additional memory being available which is exactly equal to accomodate the new string and that extra memory is available only at the end of the given string. You cannot create a new string, you have to work on existing string.

This round was doable and challenging. It was fun, I thoroughly enjoyed it.12 out of 27 people got selected

Round 3: Personal Interviews
The next round was personal interview.It was a 1 on 1 interview. I was asked only 1 question and we were discussing the same question for 50 mins.This varied with person to person.I got enough indications I wouldn’t be able to get past this round as I was encountering more problems, one after the other, in the implementation I choose.The question was pretty straightfoward though:

Given two arrays as input. Array a contains integers. Array b contains the indices of array a which needs to be deleted.

I was trying to implement a solution with complexity o(n), and the logical complexity became very high and the interviewer was not very impressed with it.

8 out of 12 people were selected to the next round.This will be after end sems, which is a pain to those who got selected as they may have to stay back during holidays and have been asked to go through the basics.

This is pretty much the entire procedure.The interviewers were very friendly.A very good experience.The entire process was just too much fun :D I wanna write more just for the heck of it :D





Microsoft Internship…some vodka please

23 10 2008

The day finally comes in my engineering career where i sit for comapnies. Well this is for internship. So microsoft is coming to take interns for summer which is more than six months away. Well some details of how the week has been. Just finished economics test yesterday, coming now after writing the OS lab end sem exam and have to submit DBS project report tomorrow. Among all these a test by MS. The preparations are great! ;)

In another few minutes i will be leaving for the test, thought the best last moments will be to write a blog. Well the first round is written C-apti. Some hope for me there. The interview will be tomorrow. But tomorrow is long way, there are 101 people competing for this internship and i have no clue how many is on offer.

My programming skills have lost touch and polish of late, weary of what i will do with interview. I can probably discuss Chandrayaan-1 and India’s secret nuclear submarine Advanced Technolgy Vechicle(ATV). I wish he lets me speak about Computer Graphics and i get a chance to work on DirectX.

All other strategies are dynamic! This is going to be more of a test in distracting him into subjects i know. Will update after my tests.

Cheers!

P.S. : Here is the sequel
http://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/microsoft-internshippart-ii/





Programming pidgin status message

21 10 2008

Ever wanted to program your status message. Well this article below explains wonderfully how to go about doing it

http://ipowerinfinity.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/fun-with-gtalkpidgin-changing-your-status-messages-programatically





A great discussion on comparisons of different programming languages

31 08 2008

This link has an amazing discussion on the vasious apsects of different programming languages
http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2007/02/right-to-criticize-programming.html





Comparing different programming languages

28 08 2008

Ever wanted to compare different programmign languages and test which one is more effecient? Either in terms of speed of execution, size of the binary files created or the size occupied by the program in the memory?  Then the Computer Language Benchmarks Game is for you. This game lets you compare different programming languages. You ask how? The details can be found on their website:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4

But for starters, it compares the implementation of defferent programming languages to solve a specific set of tasks. And how is the implementation tested?By profiling a code written for solving that particular task. The code used to have the comparison is open to all for review, so anyone can optimise it.

This provides a rough comparison estimate between languages of similar types(need not always be similar), like if a particular implementation is better in C or C++

So go and check it out yourself, here is an comparison between C and C++

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gcc&lang2=gp





Hello world!

28 08 2008

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!