How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer talk - Oct 17 2016

Monday, October 17, 2016 @ 6:00 pm ( link )
Pixability - 77 North Washington Street, Boston, MA
by T. J. Maher
@tjmaher1

10/17/2016 2
About This Talk
How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer
Slides have been posted on SlideShare.Net.
http://slideshare.net/tjmaher1
Note: This presentation has been adapted for SlideShare.
Slideshare does not handle animations.
What used to be originally animations has been split out across
various slides.

What about the audience?
10/17/2016 3How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer
Where are the:
 People who aren’t in the Quality Assurance field who may not
know what we QA people do?
 Manual testers trying to break into the automation field?
 Automation developers?
 Software developers?

10/17/2016 How to pass a coding interview 4
About the Speaker:
Thomas F. Maher, Jr. ( “T.J.” )
@tjmaher1
http://tjmaher.com
About the Speaker:
Thomas F. Maher, Jr. ( “T.J.” )
@tjmaher1
1996: Start of Software Testing Career
2014: Working with Selenium WebDriver / Java
2015: Blogger, Adventures in Automation
2016: Contributing Writer to TechBeacon
 How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer,
by T.J. Maher, Sept 21, 2016
 BSCS from Bridgewater State
 MSE from Brandeis University

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate
10/17/2016 5
Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts!

 Build Model of Customer
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 Taking Model through Software Development Process
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The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…

10/17/2016 9
 Software requirements

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 Acceptance criteria

10/17/2016 11
 The software development process

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 The software itself

10/17/2016 13
 My own assumptions about the product

10/17/2016 14
 My own assumptions about the product
Finding bugs is fun, too … don’t tell the developers…

10/17/2016 15
QA: The Not So Fun Parts! 

10/17/2016 16
Regression Testing: 

10/17/2016 17
Checking the old functionality still works in:
 IE9, IE10, IE11

10/17/2016 18
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge

10/17/2016 19
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox

10/17/2016 20
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox
 Safari on the Mac

10/17/2016 21
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox
Automation Development Makes Things Fun Again: 

10/17/2016 22
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox
 Write software to automatically check the old stuff is still
working

10/17/2016 23
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox
working
 Selenium WebDriver to emulate the user workflows

10/17/2016 24
 IE9, IE10, IE11
 MS Edge
 Chrome, Firefox
working
 Selenium WebDriver to emulate the user workflows
 Testing the Webservices or REST APIs

10/17/2016 25
Before My First Technical Interviews:
Incorrect Assumptions

The Technical Interview Would Be Based
Around Automation Development
Experience
10/17/2016 26
Assumption #1:

The Technical Interview Would Be Based
Around Automation Development
Experience
10/17/2016 27
Assumption #1:
I’d be writing Selenium WebDriver code
either:
 On a laptop
 On a whiteboard
Assumption #2:

10/17/2016 28
The Technical Interview

A developer instructed me to go to the whiteboard and answer the
following:
10/17/2016 29

following:
10/17/2016 30
“Using your favorite programming
language: Write a method that
checks to see if a given word is a
palindrome.”

following:
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“Using your favorite programming
language: Write a method that
checks to see if a given word is a
palindrome.
“Example palindromes: ‘noon’ and
‘racecar’.”

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard
10/17/2016 33
And then this happened…

• Developers waiting for me to do …
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• Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!!
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• Scribbled something down....
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• Erased it.
10/17/2016 37

• Erased it.
• Scribbled something down...
10/17/2016 38

• Erased it.
• Stared blankly.
10/17/2016 39

• Erased it.
• Stared blankly.
• Finished only half of the problem.
10/17/2016 40

I joked with the interviewers. If only:
10/17/2016 41
Technical Interview: The Aftermath

 Questions focused solely on automation
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 Interview demoed writing an automation script
10/17/2016 43

Their response:
10/17/2016 44

Their response:
“All employees are expected to meet a certain
minimum standard of coding knowledge, even
for quality assurance positions”.
10/17/2016 45

Their response:
“All employees are expected to meet a certain
minimum standard of coding knowledge, even
for quality assurance positions”.
10/17/2016 46
… These types of questions asked in 10 out of 12 of my
interviews!

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New Requirements
For Automation Developers

 Screening for Basic Fluency in a Programming Language
10/17/2016 48
New Requirements

 Automation Developers asked same interview questions as
Software Developers
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New Requirements

Software Developers
 Automation Developers are Software Developers
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New Requirements

Software Developers
 Automation Developers are Software Developers
 Same code quality in the automation test framework as the
software application itself.
10/17/2016 51
New Requirements

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course:
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How to Become Fluent in Coding?

 Members of the Boston Public Library get a free subscription
to Lynda.com.
10/17/2016 53

to Lynda.com.
 Massively Open Online Courses such as Mooc.org, indexes
absolutely free edX courses from Harvard, MIT and other
colleges dealing with Computer Science, Java
10/17/2016 54

to Lynda.com.
 Coursera.org by Duke, Stanford, Johns Hopkins
10/17/2016 55

to Lynda.com.
 Coursera.org by Duke, Stanford, Johns Hopkins
 Udacity.org, backed by Google, AT&T and Amazon, also has
free courses in Java, JavaScript, etc. Learn by creating
projects.
10/17/2016 56

Step 2: Read the Documentation:
 Learning Java? Java has official “Learning trails” with chapters such
as Getting Started, Learning the Java Language, and Essential Java
Classes.
 Learning JavaScript? Free online books such as Speaking
JavaScript. Other resources are listed on my blog.

Step 2: Read the Documentation:
 Learning Java? Java has official “Learning trails” with chapters such
as Getting Started, Learning the Java Language, and Essential Java
Classes.
 Learning JavaScript? Free online books such as Speaking
JavaScript. Other resources are listed on my blog.
Step 3: Solve Coding Problems on Paper
 Make up simple homework examples and solve them on
paper while reading documentation.
 DON’T DO CRAM SESSIONS
 Create functions that do mathematical operations or string
comparison.

Mathematic Examples:
Sketch out on paper a function that uses a for loop to print out,
in the range of 1 to 100:
 All even numbers within that range
 All odd numbers.
 All numbers divisible by three
 All numbers divisible by three and five
String Manipulation:
Sketch out a function that takes in a string s and returns:
 The length as an integer (Java: s.length)
 The first character (s.charAt(0) )
 The last character (s.charAt(s.length - 1) )

10/17/2016 60
During the Coding Interview
1. Define the problem:
Take a moment to think of what information you need from
the interviewer to solve the problem.
Do candidates immediately jump into the code, possibly not
realizing that the specs are unclear?
Or do they take a step back, examine the problem and gather
the requirements?

2. Start with initial test cases:
Do candidates come up with enough edge cases to test their
code? How thorough are they? Do they go through test data
with us?
If Palindromes are matched character by character, space by
space:
 “noon”, “racecar” 
 “Madam, I’m Adam” 
 “Alpha” 
 “A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama!” 
Single character strings? 
Empty Strings? 

3. Walk the interviewer through solution
Does the candidate sketch out the problem, talking out loud so the
interviewer can get a sense of the candidate's thoughts on solving
the problem?

the problem?
4. Come up with a solution
Can the candidate write clear and concise code?

the problem?
4. Come up with a solution
Can the candidate write clear and concise code?
5. Debug and Test Your Code
Does the candidate accept feedback gracefully?

10/17/2016 65
Summary
Find basic coding problems on the web.
Solve them with a pen and paper.
Find official documentation to see if built in functions can help
you
Come up with your own solution first
Don't do cram sessions. That merely store the information in
your short-term memory.
Practice a little bit at a time

Don't go through all this effort just to pass a
whiteboard test.
Aim higher! Make it your goal to be a better
programmer.
Thank you!
10/17/2016 How to pass a coding interview 66

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Appendix: Palindrome Solutions
public boolean isPalindrome(String s) {
int head = 0;
int tail = s.length() - 1;
while (head < tail) {
if (s.charAt(head) != s.charAt(tail)) {
return false;
}
head++;
tail--;
}
return true;
}
Attempt #1:

public boolean isPalindrome(String s) {
int len = s.length;
for (int i = 0; i < len / 2; i++) {
if ( s.charAt(i) != s.charAt(len-1- i)) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
Attempt #2:
Write the code using a basic for loop.

10/17/2016 69
Further Reading
Coding Interviews:
 Gayle Laakmann McDowell's book, Cracking the Coding
Interview
 "Get that Job at Google", Steve Yegge, March 12, 2008
 "Get that Job at Facebook", Carlos Bueno, July 20, 2012
Practice Questions:
 Top Ten Algorithms For Coding Interviews
The slides are at:
http://slideshare.net/tjmaher1

How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer talk - Oct 17 2016

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