seanwolter

At Vokal our engineering interview process is pretty simple. Before we get emotionally attached
to any candidate we meet with them for two coding challenges. Candidates solve these contrived 
coding conundrums with members of our team. During the challenge candidates are encouraged to 
check documentation, google for help, and talk to their proctor. The exercise is not about 
brain teasers, but how candidates work with people to solve a novel problem. Most of our 
challenges require manipulating basic data structures. The work is completed in a collaborative
text editor. Often the most difficult part for candidates is working without autocomplete.

We've often asked ourselves what we want from candidates in these programming exercises. In short,
we're trying our best to notice the idiosyncrasies of a good engineer. There are small things like,

seanwolter

    UITextPosition *firstRowStart = self.myTextView.beginningOfDocument;
    UITextPosition *firstRowEnd = [self.myTextView.tokenizer positionFromPosition:firstRowStart
                                                                       toBoundary:UITextGranularityLine
                                                                      inDirection:UITextLayoutDirectionRight];

    NSString *lastWord = nil;
    while (!lastWord) {
        UITextRange *range = [self.myTextView.tokenizer rangeEnclosingPosition:firstRowEnd
                                                               withGranularity:UITextGranularityWord

seanwolter

- (NSArray *)lastWordOfEachLine
{
    NSMutableArray *wordArray = [@[] mutableCopy];
    UITextPosition *firstRowStart = self.myTextView.beginningOfDocument;
    UITextPosition *rowEnd = [self.myTextView.tokenizer positionFromPosition:firstRowStart
                                                                  toBoundary:UITextGranularityLine
                                                                 inDirection:UITextLayoutDirectionRight];

    BOOL done = NO;

seanwolter

+ (NSDate *)dateFromRFC3339String:(NSString *)dateString
{
    NSDate *date = nil;
    if (dateString) {
        NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [self internetDateTimeFormatter];

        NSString *RFC3339String = [[NSString stringWithString:dateString] uppercaseString];
        RFC3339String = [RFC3339String stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"Z" withString:@"-0000"];
        if (RFC3339String.length > 20) {
            RFC3339String = [RFC3339String stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@":"

seanwolter

- (void)attachMetadata
{
    DLog(@"EXIF data is %@",self.exifData);
    [self.exifData setObject:@1 forKey:@"Orientation"];

    NSData *jpeg = UIImageJPEGRepresentation(self.image, 1);
    CGImageSourceRef sourceRef = CGImageSourceCreateWithData((__bridge CFDataRef)jpeg, NULL);
    NSMutableData *dest_data = [NSMutableData data];
    CFStringRef UTI = CGImageSourceGetType(sourceRef);
    CGImageDestinationRef destination = CGImageDestinationCreateWithData((__bridge CFMutableDataRef)dest_data,UTI,1,NULL);

seanwolter

// MyOperation.h
@interface MyOperation : NSOperation
@end

// MyOperation.m
@implementation MyOperation

- (void)main {
    if ([self isCancelled]) {
        NSLog(@"** operation cancelled **");

seanwolter

#define screenHeight()      ([UIScreen mainScreen].bounds.size.height)

#define isPhoneFive()       (screenHeight() == 568)

#define isOS6()             ([[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion]intValue] > 5.2)

#define UIInterfaceIdiomIsPad() (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad)

#define UIColorFromRGB(rgbValue) [UIColor \
colorWithRed:((float)((rgbValue & 0xFF0000) >> 16))/255.0 \

seanwolter

/*
 * SenTestingKit does not wait for blocks to finish by default so your test would simply complete 
 * as successful. You need to use a semaphore and keep the run loop going in order for the test
 * to properly run.
 */
- (void)testGetSpots {
    dispatch_semaphore_t semaphore = dispatch_semaphore_create(0);    
    CLLocation location = [[CLLocation alloc] initWithLatitude:70.0 longitude:50.0];
    [Spot spotsWithURLString:@"/spots" near:location parameters:[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:@"128" forKey:@"per_page"] block:^(NSArray *records) {
        //sample assert

seanwolter

- (void)awakeFromNib
{
    [self strechImageForControlState:UIControlStateNormal];
    [self strechImageForControlState:UIControlStateDisabled];
    [self strechImageForControlState:UIControlStateHighlighted];
    [self strechImageForControlState:UIControlStateSelected];
}

- (void)strechImageForControlState:(UIControlState)controlState
{

seanwolter

    NSMutableArray *objects = [@[] mutableCopy];
    NSObject *someObject = [NSObject new];
    objects[objects.count] = object;