The author of Homebrew failed Google's interview, because he even can't inverse a binary tree on white board. I tried the question yesterday morning, straight forward recursion with a little bit trick in the order of processing. But I am far from a SDE, I didn't even write a software before, let alone something like Homebrew.
This is ironic.
I am taking summer intern in a young tech company called ShutterStock, this is a very dynamic company, the team I am working with all use window .NET framework and C#. Those people are very good at framework thing and very fluently use very good third party tools. All in all, they are productive and skillful. However, I remembered one evening I was doing my Machine learning assignment at office, and my colleagues saw it and asked what is it. I said I am coding a SVM(supported vector machine). None of them even heard it. They claimed that it is a academic thing.
I am not good at algorithm questions for now, but I do admire the ability of analyzing and solving them. On one hand, it could only base on how much practice and how many times you have done it, on other hand, at the same time you are forming your style of thinking and analyzing. I believe no one is born to be a master in algorithm problem solving, it takes effort, some people learn fast, and some go furthest. But what finally you gonna get out of it? An offer? A hobby? ...
But the truth is that, every CS people need to go through this, and master it to some extent.
I am taking a summer night course and full time intern, wouldn't have any time sitting down and solving leetcode problems till July. However, I do promise a series of posting on classic methods in August if not earlier.
