kd

jobSearchLinear.js

const ACTIVITIES = [
  {name: 'side-project', time: 10, xp: 12},
  {name: 'algorithms', time: 3, xp: 7},
  {name: 'networking', time: 1, xp: 0.5},
  {name: 'exercise', time: 2, xp: 1.5},
  {name: 'systems design', time: 4, xp: 4},
  {name: 'making CSS codepens', time: 3, xp: 4}
];

/**
 * Returns array of type string with names of activites that maximize XP
 * @param {number} time
 */
const findJob = (time, activities) => {
  let maxVal = -Infinity;
  let max = null;

  // recursively find all combinations of activities
  // if the total XP of any combination is greater than max, store in closure
  const findCombos = (items, prefix=[]) => {
    for (let i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
      const combo = [
        ...prefix, 
        items[i]
      ];
      const xp = totalXp(combo);
      if (xp > maxVal && totalTime(combo) <= time) {
        maxVal = xp;
        max = combo;
      }
      findCombos(items.slice(i + 1), combo);
    }
  };

  const totalXp = acts => acts.reduce((total, act) => total + act.xp, 0);

  const totalTime = acts => acts.reduce((total, act) => total + act.time, 0);

  findCombos(activities);
  return max.map(act => act.name);
};
// The time complexity of this solution is O(n! * n)
// The space complexity is O(n! * n)

console.log(findJob(10, ACTIVITIES)); 
//=> [ 'algorithms', 'systems design', 'making CSS codepens' ]

Interesting gist! But where does the acts come from? It suddenly pops out out of nowhere...

(bear with me, I rarely write Javascript)

@edopelawi totalXp is a function that takes one argument (acts) and return the result of the reduction on the argument