Discussion on: Recursion Algorithm Practice: Fibonacci Sequence Generator

As it turns out, the solution proposed by @rrampage included a list comprehension that demonstrated a potential use case of the generator (they responded to let me know). Admittedly, I simply copy/pasted that solution and ran the tests on it without actually reading it 😑 .

The second solution I proposed didn't have that list comp in it neither did their revised solution. There was a slight performance hit in x-time, but the RAM usage was much better without the generator being appended to a list. So for raw performance, I still favor the iterative solution. But for a well-balanced approach that is lighter on RAM but trivially different in x-time, I agree the generator is best.

As far as the interview went, I feel it was good. It was a 3-hour interview process. I met with 8 people from different teams who all questioned me on the topics they found most important. There was a discussion on brands, Big-O quizzing and data structure questions, product and culture-fit questions, comfort level with Agile, and finally, the fourth team of 2 gave me a whiteboard challenge.

Here is where, I feel, I struggled mightily for two reasons: 1) I was totally fried from the previous 3 teams and their questioning and 2) This was my first official engineering interview in at least 5 years. I also did not have a whiteboard available in that conference room so I was figuring out my solution in my notebook. This meant that I kept running out of room on a page, and would flip to the next page and re-write what was on the first page so that the interviewers could see what I was doing. I also overengineered the algorithm. Big time. In the end, I "couldn't see the forest through the trees" and ended up with a quasi-solution that I didn't particularly care for. Both interviewers chuckled along with me though and told me that they had done the same exact thing I did the week before when they had first seen that problem in preparation for my interview.

Ultimately, I think my thought process was good and I did talk them through my thoughts the whole time. But writing code from memory on a piece of notebook paper in the span of 30-minutes or so is never easy so I think I'll be forgiven. The thought process is what most interviewers really look for (I hope).

Either way, I had a blast, loved the people and the interviewers, and am really hoping things work out. If nothing else, it was a bit of a confidence boost because the majority of my programming experience is in the freelance space and I have no degree, just curiosity. So to be able to go in there and stand toe-to-toe with career software engineers and make any sort of impression is great.