Software Engineering interview questions

This will be an ongoing post; all questions are based on my personal experience with real interview - both phone screens and on-site. Couple of points:
- Since all of it is based on recollection, the text of the individual questions is paraphrased from the actual interview.
- Some of the questions are obviously quite straightforward, at least for those familiar with the domain. Some others though it's not easy to find a good explanation and there's ton of material online - for those I have posted answers after consulting some available computing literature and selecting what I deemed to be the most lucid and to the point, and indicated the source along with the answer.

SW Engineering interview questions - 1
SW Engineering interview questions - 2
SW Engineering interview questions - 3

Auschwitz, and the debatable atrocities

Auschwitz

While the system of concentration camps characterized Nazi-occupied Europe, even dating back several years before the start of 2^nd World War (Oranienburg near Berlin was set up as early as 1933), Auschwitz-Birkenau was among 6 extermination camps, all in Poland (the other five being Belzek, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno and Majdanek). Liberated in January 1945 by the Soviets.

Auschwitz has since become the ultimate symbol of human suffering, and grotesquely enough, a yardstick. I say grotesque because the “uniqueness” of the Jewish Holocaust has itself been a subject of much debate, and some consider even having such a debate on the “ranking of human suffering” to be a “moral abomination”¹.

However it is not my intent here to broach that subject of uniqueness. It will suffice to note though, Auschwitz falls into the category of human depravity that is not debatable.

 “There are certain issues, for example, Auschwitz, such that by consenting to discuss them one degrades oneself and to some degree loses one’s humanity, and I think that’s true. Nevertheless I can easily imagine circumstances in which I would have been glad to debate Auschwitz, for example if there were some chance that by debating Auschwitz it might have been possible to eliminate it, or to at least mitigate the horror of what was going on.”

Those were the words of Noam Chomsky as he explained the moral anguish of even starting to debate Vietnam in a now classic debate² with William F. Buckley in 1969.

What I wanted to ask though is, what level of human suffering is necessary, to render the agent of that suffering, undebatable.

I will look at the following two examples:

Hiroshima:

For some unfathomable reason, the debate exists. The August 2015 issue of BBC History magazine carried this subject as the cover article. Not only was it debated, 4 out of 7 scholars considered the act justifiable, including best-selling military historian Anthony Beevor, and a social science professor here in Boston. Two of the three that swayed to the other side, cited reasons such as the bombs having little to do with Japan’s surrender, better alternatives being discarded, and so on. The article even carries a picture of an unrelated atrocity (the relation being WWII of course) of the Bataan death march in the Philippines and mentions how certain historians “cite Japanese atrocities such as these when discussing the decision to drop the bomb”.

Not only could I not locate the moral imperative anywhere in this article, but the idea that one depravity could be seen as a justification for the other was lost on me.

Few months later in the same magazine, there was a letter from an American woman that compared such debates after the fact as “Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

Now consider the following snippet, from an account of various types of neuroses observed by Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe (whose own son had been born with a severe head abnormality) in “Hiroshima Notes” –

“A young mother,.., gave birth to a stillborn, deformed child. The young mother was an A-bomb victim who had suffered burns and consequent keloid scars; she had prepared herself for misfortune, but wanted to have a look at her baby. When the doctor refused to permit it, she asked her husband to look at it. He went to see the baby, only to find that it had already been disposed of.”³

Torture:

A book came out recently titled “Does Torture Work?” (author John Schiemann); here is an excerpt from the preface -

“It may be that we would reject interrogational torture even if it did work, as un-American or on other moral grounds. In other words, demonstrating that interrogational torture is effective may not be a sufficient condition to justify its use, but it is surely a necessary condition: If it does not work, then it cannot be justified as an interrogation technique.”

The author proceeds to work on the second part (necessary condition) as that seems the only relevant thing worth establishing –

“There are many decent and reasonable people who do not like the idea of torture but think it is necessary to protect America and Americans from terrorism. If this describes you, then I hope I can convince you that it is worth examining through reason and logic the assumption that torture works. If you are someone already opposes torture, I hope I am able to convince you why it is necessary not to treat proponents as “moral monsters” but instead to examine the effectiveness claims of torture proponents.”

And he does so using the complex mathematical approach of game theory, which must be revolutionary in this area.

The moral problem is acknowledged,

“For many, of course, the question of torture’s effectiveness is irrelevant: Torture is unjustified whether or not it is effective. Call this rights-focused group Kantians..” (Chapter 1 – “Interrogating Torture”)

but sidestepped; proving the effectiveness of torture is the only aim of the text.

As Chomsky reminds moments later in that debate, there were people who debated in favor of Auschwitz. And that’s important to note, because the status of Auschwitz in public discourse was never a given axiom, it attained that status through a collective understanding.

Now consider the following text -

“It is impossible to read without a shudder the words left behind by Jean Amery, the Austrian philosopher tortured by the Gestapo for his activity in the Belgian resistance, and later deported to Auschwitz as a Jew.

‘Whoever was tortured, stays tortured…Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world. The shame of destruction cannot be erased. Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained.’

Torture was for Amery an endless death.”⁴

We could go on with examples.

To the victim, there’s no debate, no equivocation. Words of pain themselves are the indictment of torture. The irony is that these words are Jean Amery and Primo Levi’s – who actually went through Auschwitz.

Quotations:

1. “Now intellectually that (uniqueness) doctrine is vacuous; morally it’s an abomination. This notion of ranking human suffering. How can you prove that somebody who’s been napalmed, a child who’s been napalmed, has suffered less than the child who’s been dispatched to a gas chamber?.. And why would you even wanna go there?” – Norman Finkelstein (author of “The Holocaust Industry”), in an interview, available on Youtube
2. Transcript of the interview available on http://buckley-chomsky.weebly.com/
3. From “Hiroshima Notes” – “The Moralists of Hiroshima”, by Kenzaburo Oe.
4. From “The Drowned and the Saved” – Ch.1 “The Memory of the Offense”, by Primo Levi.

Up close with 'From Afar' and Lorenzo Vigas in Miami

Director Lorenzo Vigas, lead actor Luis Silva and the presenter

(Warning: text contains some spoilers)

There is a first time for everything. I had never earlier been at the presentation of a winning film at any of the world’s 3 premier film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice) when the director would be there in person. Sunday 6^th of March, at the MDC Tower Theater changed all that when director Lorenzo Vigas, and Luis Silva, one of the lead actors from the Venezuelan film “Desde Alla” (“From Afar”), winner of 2015 Golden Lion at Venice, and the first ever Latin American film to do so, presented their film at this year’s Miami International Film Festival.

I was with my buddy Jesus, who is of Venezuelan origin. I understand it must be a proud moment for all Venezuelans and Latin Americans in general (Latin American films in particular had a breakout year at 2015 Venice). Given that Venezuela has a near minimal cinematic output year to year, this being the first ever to even get a nomination at Venice made its success even more spectacular.

Prior to the screening, there was a brief introduction; Mr. Vigas mentioned they maintain strong ties with the Miami community – to me that underscored the importance of the Miami festival in terms of Latin American cinema, because that is definitely the area of emphasis and consequently draws a lot of the cast and crew you would have a hard time anywhere else getting close access to.

After the screening, the director had an interesting way of addressing the Q&A by posing a question himself first on why the audience thought Armando called the cops on Elder; he also asked if we thought Armando had fallen for Elder by the end of the film. He emphasized he had some thoughts while scripting, but now the film belonged to the audience.

After the formal Q&A, both the director and the actor were gracious enough to entertain further questions and pose for pictures with people who stuck around. Their humility and approachability were remarkable. I asked Mr. Vigas, that seeing how he indicated he may have had a skeletal idea of the story, but really felt the film was open to interpretation, I wondered who his influences were, and if Michael Haneke was among them. He said yes, and also Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Bruno Dumont.

(In his interviews, Michael Haneke provides insights on his own films that are at once loaded with historical context, and impossibly frustrating, as he impishly relishes in reiterating there is no single definitive way of deciphering the codes he provided. I couldn’t help remembering his interviews while sitting at the Q&A.)

I also asked Mr. Vigas if while making the film which has pretty strong content, they had thought about its reception in a traditionally Catholic country like Venezuela; he said that had not been a concern.

I felt that the presenter had a somewhat imposing way of introducing the film. It was a “breath of fresh air” (of course) from a country known for its “bad presidents” and beauty pageants (really?). Also he reiterated at least twice the significance of the Venice film festival – I guess he just didn’t want to make assumptions about the audience’s intellect. And that may be alright. In the process though, I found a ring of commonality that applied to Indian cinema as well. A cinematic culture that is now synonymous with Bollywood, had its first Golden Lion with Satyajit Ray’s second instalment of the Apu trilogy back in 1957 (see table), and the second Asian only after Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’.

At last year’s Toronto film festival I had to skip the screening of “From Afar”. Barely a week from winning the top prize at Venice, it had an early Saturday afternoon screening at the TIFF, and I started driving from Boston the morning itself. In a sense, I had unknowingly saved myself the opportunity to see the film alongside its creators.

Footnote -

Dating back to the Fascist days, the Venice film festival is the oldest of the big three; awarded its first Golden Lion in 1949; subsequently ran into doldrums in the late 60s, and no Golden Lion was awarded from 1969-79.

Golden Lion winners from outside Europe and North America -

Year	Film	Director	Country
1951	Rashomon	Akira Kurosawa	Japan
1957	Aparajito	Satyajit Ray	India
1958	Muhomatsu no issho (The Rickshaw Man)	Hiroshi Inagaki	Japan
1989	Bei qing cheng shi (A City of Sadness)	Hsiao-Hsien Hou	Hong Kong/Taiwan
1992	Qiu Ju da guan si (The Story of Qiu Ju)	Yimou Zhang	China
1994	Ai qing wan sui (Vive L’Amour)	Ming-liang Tsai	Taiwan
1995	Xich lo (Cyclo)	Tran Anh Hung	Vietnam/France/Hong Kong
1997	Hana-bi (Fireworks)	Takeshi Kitano	Japan
1999	Yi ge dou bu neng shao (Not One Less)	Yimou Zhang	China
2000	Dayereh (The Circle)	Jafar Panahi	Iran
2001	Monsoon Wedding	Mira Nair	India/USA/Germany/Italy/France
2006	Sanxia haoren (Still Life)	Zhangke Jia	China/Hong Kong
2007	Se, jie (Lust, Caution)	Ang Lee	USA/China/Taiwan
2009	Lebanon	Samuel Maoz	Israel/France/Germany/UK
2012	Pieta	Ki-duk Kim	South Korea
2015	Desde Alla (From Afar)	Lorenzo Vigas	Venezuela/Mexico

(Source: IMDB)

How does your city stack up in pro sports?

U.S. metro areas in professional sports in this millennium

Winner / Runner-up

Year	NFL	MLB	NBA	NHL
2000	Baltimore Ravens / New York Giants	New York Yankees / New York Mets	LA Lakers / Indiana Pacers	New Jersey Devils / Dallas Stars
2001	New England Patriots / St. Louis Rams	Arizona Diamondbacks / New York Yankees	LA Lakers / Philadelphia 6ers	Colorado Rockies / New Jersey Devils
2002	Tampa Bay Buccaneers / Oakland Raiders	Anaheim Angels / San Francisco Giants	LA Lakers / New Jersey Nets	Detroit Red Wings / Carolina Hurricanes
2003	New England Patriots / Carolina Panthers	Florida Marlins / New York Yankees	San Antonio Spurs / New Jersey Nets	New Jersey Devils / Anaheim Ducks
2004	New England Patriots / Philadelphia Eagles	Boston Red Sox / St. Louis Cardinals	Detroit Pistons / LA Lakers	Tampa Bay Lightning / Calgary Flames
2005	Pittsburgh Steelers / Seattle Seahawks	Chicago White Sox / Houston Astros	San Antonio Spurs / Detroit Pistons	-       (lockout)
2006	Indianapolis Colts / Chicago Bears	St. Louis Cardinals / Detroit Tigers	Miami Heat / Dallas Mavericks	Carolina Hurricanes / Edmonton Oilers
2007	NY Giants / New England Patriots	Boston Red Sox / Colorado Rockies	San Antonio Spurs / Cleveland Cavaliers	Anaheim Ducks / Ottawa Senators
2008	Pittsburgh Steelers / Arizona Cardinals	Philadelphia Phillies / Tampa Bay Rays	Boston Celtics / LA Lakers	Detroit Red Wings / Pittsburgh Penguins
2009	New Orleans Saints / Indianapolis Colts	NY Yankees / Philadelphia Phillies	LA Lakers / Orlando Magic	Pittsburgh Penguins / Detroit Red Wings
2010	Green Bay Packers / Pittsburgh Steelers	San Francisco Giants / Texas Rangers	LA Lakers / Boston Celtics	Chicago Blackhawks / Philadelphia Flyers
2011	NY Giants / New England Patriots	St. Louis Cardinals / Texas Rangers	Dallas Mavericks / Miami Heat	Boston Bruins / Vancouver Canucks
2012	Baltimore Ravens / San Francisco 49ers	San Francisco Giants / Detroit Tigers	Miami Heat / Oklahoma City Thunder	LA Kings / New Jersey Devils
2013	Seattle Seahawks / Denver Broncos	Boston Red Sox / St. Louis Cardinals	Miami Heat / San Antonio Spurs	Chicago Blackhawks / Boston Bruins
2014	New England Patriots / Seattle Seahawks	San Francisco Giants / Kansas City Royals	San Antonio Spurs / Miami Heat	LA Kings / NY Rangers
2015	Denver Broncos / Carolina Panthers	Kansas City Royals / NY Mets	Golden State Warriors / Cleveland Cavaliers	Chicago Blackhawks / Tampa Bay Lightning

Note:

• Not all cities/metro areas have teams in all 4 pro sports
• Following metro areas have multiple teams in one sport
• New York: NY Yankees, NY Mets in MLB, NY Giants, NY Jets in NFL; NY Rangers, NY Islanders in NHL
• Los Angeles: LA Lakers, LA Clippers in NBA
• Chicago: Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs in MLB
• Team dynamics since 2000:
• Detroit Red Wings moved out of Western to Eastern Conference effective 2014, their appearances in Stanley Cup Finals were as WC champions
• Anaheim Angels were renamed L.A. Angels of Anaheim in 2005
• Florida Marlins were renamed Miami Marlins in 2012
• St. Louis Rams will transfer to L.A. effective 2016

Trophy cabinet:

City	NFL	MLB	NBA	NHL	Total
Boston	4	3	1	1	9
Los Angeles			5	2	7
Chicago		1		3	4
Miami		1	3		4
New York	2	2			4
San Antonio			4		4
Detroit			1	2	3
Pittsburgh	2			1	3
San Francisco		3			3

Takeaways:

• Boston is the only city to have won a championship in all 4 pro sports
• How close the top 2 metro areas came to getting another championship:
• Boston 4 times (2 NFL, 1 NBA, 1 NHL); Los Angeles 1 time (NBA), discounting the recent move of Rams from St. Louis to L.A.