Why would you use anything other than Math.max?
Some of us have trust issues. Or worked with Java.
Which, now that I think about it, comes to the same thing.
Well, the question sort of implies that you’re needing to implementing
Math.maxyourself, for whatever reason. Probably as an exercise. It doesn’t make sense to reuse a library that implements the feature if you’re explicitly being asked how you would implement it yourself.This is why I think school and interviews are like a whole different universe from the one where actual work gets done.
In some ways they can be wholly different, but I don’t think this is a good example of it.
Any programmer who cannot implement “take two numbers, return the larger one” is clearly not very competent. Even though you’re never going to literally need to implement Math.max yourself at work, you are going to need basically the same types of skills. Probably 95% of the work I do day-to-day is stuff you’d learn in your first year at uni, and this just shows that you’ve got that ability.
In practice, the best interviews I’ve had usually set a slightly more complicated task as a do-in-your-own-time problem and then go through what you did in the actual interview. Problems like “read a list of names in the form , each name on a separate line, from a text file. Sort the names by last name, then by other names. Output to another text file. Include unit tests.” They wouldn’t then expect you to re-implement the sorting algorithm itself, but more want to look at the quality of code, extensibility, etc.
More basic questions like the one in the OP, or fizzbuzz, are decent as well, and a big step up from lame questions like “what does SOLID stand for? What does the Liskov substitution principle mean to you?” Even if they’re not quite as valuable as a miniature project.
I think you can probably make the question a lot more interesting by asking them to implement max without using any branching syntax. I’m not saying that is necessarily a good interview question, but it is certainly more interesting. That might also be where some of the more esoteric answers are coming from.
In practice, the best interviews I’ve had usually set a slightly more complicated task as a do-in-your-own-time problem and then go through what you did in the actual interview.
The best interviews you’ve had are the ones where you’re doing free work on your own time?
“Work” is a debatable term. It’s not work that provides any direct value to the company, if that’s what you mean. But yes, it involves more effort on my part.
But yes. Not only does this method let me show that I’m good at what I do (far better than nonsense theory questions do), I have also found that companies that use this approach tend to come across as a better fit in other ways during the interview process.
Thief way is actually the best among all of these imo, in terms of readability and efficiency.
Not using thief is professional incompetence unless you’re doing something deeply cursed
Like pair programming.
Sometimes you need to minimize function calls in a tight loop, but otherwise yeah
Why would you be using JS in this scenario?
I was under the impression that modern compilers just inline something like that, and even in older languages (like C) use trickeries are used to inline it (typically MAX is a macro rather than a real function, so its always inlined)
Ultimatelly it depends not just on what you’re doing but also the language and compiler you’re using.
Sometimes, but practically never. Just be a thief.
If you’re optimizing that hard you should probably sort the data first anyway, but yeah, sometimes it’s absolutely called for. Not that I’ve actually needed that in my professional career, but then again I’ve never worked close enough to metal for it to actually matter.
That said, all of these are implemented as functions, so they’re already costing the function call anyway…
Fr. People like to reimplement wheels tho
They’re setting a variable to a function. Just use the original function. All thief does is obfuscate for literally no gain except character count.
I presumed it to be a standin for just directly using Math.max, since there’s no nice way to show that in a valid code snippet
Yeah, that’s my reading as well.
Sounds good to me
TDD
const max12 = (x, y) => { if (x === 1 && y === 2) { return 2; } else if (x === 7 && y === 4) { return 7; } else { return x; } };Thief. Writing code is for chumps, and the more code you right, the more of a chump you are.
why say many word when few do trick
Why 🗣️📈 word when 😃👍
Writing code is for chumps, and the more code you right, the more of a chump you are.
So you’re the one in there wronging up my code?
It’s too late now to wright my wrongh
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Where’s the Julia programmer that hits every one of these with @benchmark and then works for six hours to shave three nanoseconds off of the fastest one?
(Example: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/faster-bernoulli-sampling/35209)
404 or walled
Thief no doubt
Thief gang. Why stand on shoulders of giants if you’re not using it to your advantage?
Mathematician 2 kinda blew my mind, kinda obvious, just can’t believe I was never taught or thought about it.
Yeah, that was my favorite one
Lost me when it used Math.abs after calling math.max a their
Math.Sqrt((x-y) * (x-y))(I’ve actually seen someone use this)
Mathematician 3
Max(x, y) = floor(ln(e^x + e^y))
so 0.3 ~= 1-ln(2)=max(1-ln(2),1-ln(2)) = floor(ln(2*e^(1-ln(2)))) = floor(ln(2)+(1-ln(2))) = 1 ?
That would bee engeneer 2, not Mathematician3 xD.
Just out of curiostity, what was you Idea behind that?
Guess only work with integers, specially for the floor function that is going to give you an integer at the end everytime.
Not my idea, learned it somewhere while doing college in an statistics class. The idea is that the exponential function grow really fast, so small difference on variables become extreme difference on the exponential, then the log function reverse the exponential, but because it grew more for the biggest variable it reverts to the max variable making the other variables the decimal part (this is why you need the floor function). I think is cool because works for any number of variables, unlike mathematician 2 who only work for 2 variables (maybe it can be generalized for more variables but I don’t think can be done).
For a min fuction it can be use ceiling(-ln(e^-x + e^-y))
to be fair it does seem to work for any two numbers where one is >1. As lim x,y–> inf ln(ex+ey) <= lim x,y --> inf ln(2 e^(max(x,y))) = max(x,y) + ln(2).
I think is cool because works for any number of variables
using the same proof as before we can see that: lim,x_i -->inf ln(sum_i/in I} e^(x_i)) <= ln(.
So it would only work for at most [base of your log, so e<3 for ln] variables.
#define max(x,y) ( { __auto_type __x = (x); __auto_type __y = (y); __x > __y ? __x : __y; })GNU C. Also works with Clang. Avoids evaluating the arguments multiple times. The optimizer will convert the branch into a conditional move, if it doesn’t I’d replace the ternary with the “bit hacker 2” version.
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Bit hacker 2 is really fascinating. It uses a bit mask of all 1s (-1) or all 0s (0) and takes advantage of the fact that y ^ (x ^ y) = x and y ^ 0 = y
And then your customer changes their mind. Instead of two numbers, they will now input three numbers. How easy will it be for you to change your code?
And then the customer changes their mind. Instead of three numbers, they will now input any series of numbers. How easy will it be for you to change your code? And why didn’t you already do this is the previous step?
And then the customer changes their mind. Instead of any set of numbers, they will now input numbers and text. How easy will it be to change your code?
And then the customer changes their mind. They now have no idea of what they’re sending you or if they’re even sending you anything. Nevermind the code now, you already did that in the previous step, right? How easy will it be to explain what you’re invoicing them for?
How easy will it be to explain what you’re invoicing them for?
By the hour I presume
One, two and nine. Depending on the project, depending on the requirements.
Either engineer or bit hacker, depending on whether or not I’m trying to avoid branching.
If thief is actually an option, then thief.
Otherwise probably procreator or engineer 😅😬
Edit: errrrr that was supposed to say “procrastinator” 😬dyac
