Talk:2483: Linked List Interview Problem - Revision history

172.70.86.147 at 14:01, 3 April 2023

2023-04-03T14:01:43Z

Beanie at 13:20, 3 April 2023

2023-04-03T13:20:13Z

Solomon: fix typo

2022-12-01T01:34:31Z

fix typo

Solomon: add signature, oops

2022-12-01T01:34:06Z

add signature, oops

Solomon: mention Haskell linked lists

2022-12-01T01:33:42Z

mention Haskell linked lists

141.101.98.122 at 19:22, 6 July 2021

2021-07-06T19:22:54Z

141.101.98.122 at 19:22, 6 July 2021

2021-07-06T19:22:23Z

162.158.88.88: Added the point of the joke

2021-07-05T14:22:00Z

Added the point of the joke

141.101.98.206 at 18:33, 3 July 2021

2021-07-03T18:33:57Z

Trlkly: blue because "links"?

2021-07-03T07:15:39Z

blue because "links"?

@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 :...but I must say I'm not overly keen to abandon modern inbuilt splice-functions (for arrays/otherwise) doing all this hard work for me. Only if I'm looking at something of more of a net-/tree-like relationship (esp. non-Euclidean), or something with complicated multi-layered disparity of pointed-at data might I design up from such basic foundations. But I can also be nostalgic about when it was far more necessary! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.48|162.158.159.48]] 10:18, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 ::I'm sorry, but I found this *really* hard to understand, despite already knowing what linked lists are and how they work. <span style="text-shadow:0 0 6px black">[[User:Beanie|<span style="font-size:11pt;color:#dddddd">Beanie</span>]]</span> <sup><span style="text-shadow:0 0 3px #000000">[[User talk:Beanie|<span style="font-size:8pt;color:#dddddd">talk</span>]]</span></sup> 13:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 Does anyone know when the last comic was that used colors? Is this something worth mentioning? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.42|162.158.88.42]] 06:11, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 :That it potentially becomes spaghetti-data should not concern you so long as you don't have spaghetti-code as well which causes some oversight of data-mangling to mess things up. And you'll probably want to maintain a custom data-dumper/collator/formatter capability to keep an eye on things as you're debugging the inevitably miswritten shuffle-function, and/or do battle with the compiler's garbage-handling insertions when you confuse it beyond reasonable limits. (No, wait, did you do full low-level garbage-handling yourself? Did you do it ''properly''? ;) )
 :...but I must say I'm not overly keen to abandon modern inbuilt splice-functions (for arrays/otherwise) doing all this hard work for me. Only if I'm looking at something of more of a net-/tree-like relationship (esp. non-Euclidean), or something with complicated multi-layered disparity of pointed-at data might I design up from such basic foundations. But I can also be nostalgic about when it was far more necessary! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.48|162.158.159.48]] 10:18, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
+::I'm sorry, but I found this *really* hard to understand, despite already knowing what linked lists are and how they work. <span style="text-shadow:0 0 6px black">[[User:Beanie|<span style="font-size:11pt;color:#dddddd">Beanie</span>]]</span> <sup><span style="text-shadow:0 0 3px #000000">[[User talk:Beanie|<span style="font-size:8pt;color:#dddddd">talk</span>]]</span></sup> 13:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 Does anyone know when the last comic was that used colors? Is this something worth mentioning? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.42|162.158.88.42]] 06:11, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 :I think part of the joke might be that the high-level language being used will actually spit out a representation of the entire list when using the str function. So it actually does all the traversing and abstracts it away, again making the interview question seem redundant! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.48|162.158.159.48]] 10:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 ::The language looks almost like Python -- the only difference being the keyword ''define'' instead of ''def''. Lisp is the only family of languages I can think of that automatically converts linked lists to a representation of all the elements, since the linked list is its fundamental data structure. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:06, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
-:::Haskell too: `headElem:tailList` is cons, hhttps://wiki.haskell.org/How_to_work_on_lists#Notes_about_speed says "Haskell lists are ordinary single-linked lists." [[User:Solomon|Solomon]] ([[User talk:Solomon|talk]]) 01:34, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
+:::Haskell too: `headElem:tailList` is cons, https://wiki.haskell.org/How_to_work_on_lists#Notes_about_speed says "Haskell lists are ordinary single-linked lists." [[User:Solomon|Solomon]] ([[User talk:Solomon|talk]]) 01:34, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 just to make sure I get this right.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 :I think part of the joke might be that the high-level language being used will actually spit out a representation of the entire list when using the str function. So it actually does all the traversing and abstracts it away, again making the interview question seem redundant! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.48|162.158.159.48]] 10:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 ::The language looks almost like Python -- the only difference being the keyword ''define'' instead of ''def''. Lisp is the only family of languages I can think of that automatically converts linked lists to a representation of all the elements, since the linked list is its fundamental data structure. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:06, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
-:::Haskell too: `headElem:tailList` is cons, hhttps://wiki.haskell.org/How_to_work_on_lists#Notes_about_speed says "Haskell lists are ordinary single-linked lists."
+:::Haskell too: `headElem:tailList` is cons, hhttps://wiki.haskell.org/How_to_work_on_lists#Notes_about_speed says "Haskell lists are ordinary single-linked lists." [[User:Solomon|Solomon]] ([[User talk:Solomon|talk]]) 01:34, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
 just to make sure I get this right.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 :I think part of the joke might be that the high-level language being used will actually spit out a representation of the entire list when using the str function. So it actually does all the traversing and abstracts it away, again making the interview question seem redundant! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.48|162.158.159.48]] 10:40, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 ::The language looks almost like Python -- the only difference being the keyword ''define'' instead of ''def''. Lisp is the only family of languages I can think of that automatically converts linked lists to a representation of all the elements, since the linked list is its fundamental data structure. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:06, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 just to make sure I get this right.

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:22, 6 July 2021
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	I think you're all missing the point of the joke: it's not the ''linked list'' itself but the ''interview question about linked lists'' that should be donated to the museum. A typical interview question is "how do you reverse a linked list?", with the interviewer expecting you to write down the algorithm where you walk down the list while creating a new linked list in the process, wiring up its "next" pointer to the previously visited element. For the first element you traverse, you set the "next" pointer of that element in the reversed list to nil, because it will be the last element in the reversed list. The final result is a pointer to the last visited element, which becomes the head of the reversed list. These kind of questions are stereotypical for programmer interviews (just like "how do you swap to numbers without using a temporary variable?") and therefore Cueball makes a snarky remark that this question is now so archaic that it should be in a historical museum of sorts.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.88\|162.158.88.88]] 14:22, 5 July 2021 (UTC)		I think you're all missing the point of the joke: it's not the ''linked list'' itself but the ''interview question about linked lists'' that should be donated to the museum. A typical interview question is "how do you reverse a linked list?", with the interviewer expecting you to write down the algorithm where you walk down the list while creating a new linked list in the process, wiring up its "next" pointer to the previously visited element. For the first element you traverse, you set the "next" pointer of that element in the reversed list to nil, because it will be the last element in the reversed list. The final result is a pointer to the last visited element, which becomes the head of the reversed list. These kind of questions are stereotypical for programmer interviews (just like "how do you swap to numbers without using a temporary variable?") and therefore Cueball makes a snarky remark that this question is now so archaic that it should be in a historical museum of sorts.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.88\|162.158.88.88]] 14:22, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
−	:The text below the comment ("... donate their linked list ..." suggests the reading others have taken...	+	:The text below the comment ("... donate their linked list ...") suggests the reading others have taken...

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:22, 5 July 2021
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	Anyone else think the chosen color might be relevant? We're talking about linked lists and the text is written in blue, the traditional color of hyperlinks. In any other comic, I might think it a coincidence, but this is a comic that rarely uses color, and never without a purpose. [[User:Trlkly\|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly\|talk]]) 07:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)		Anyone else think the chosen color might be relevant? We're talking about linked lists and the text is written in blue, the traditional color of hyperlinks. In any other comic, I might think it a coincidence, but this is a comic that rarely uses color, and never without a purpose. [[User:Trlkly\|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly\|talk]]) 07:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
	:Blue whiteboard pens are probably the more used 'not black' (because easier on the eye?) but not specifically hued (red for important/'do not do' information, green for softer suggestions or else with comparative 'do do' positive stuff). From personal experience. Not sure if this is relevent, maybe it's just that blue-on-white is what Randall overwhelmingly experiences when he casually wanders in to NASA, JPL, Cern, NIF, Alphabet Inc, Apple Park, Redmond Campus, etc, and looks for casual inspiration on their various walls. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.206\|141.101.98.206]] 18:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC)		:Blue whiteboard pens are probably the more used 'not black' (because easier on the eye?) but not specifically hued (red for important/'do not do' information, green for softer suggestions or else with comparative 'do do' positive stuff). From personal experience. Not sure if this is relevent, maybe it's just that blue-on-white is what Randall overwhelmingly experiences when he casually wanders in to NASA, JPL, Cern, NIF, Alphabet Inc, Apple Park, Redmond Campus, etc, and looks for casual inspiration on their various walls. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.206\|141.101.98.206]] 18:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
		+
		+	I think you're all missing the point of the joke: it's not the ''linked list'' itself but the ''interview question about linked lists'' that should be donated to the museum. A typical interview question is "how do you reverse a linked list?", with the interviewer expecting you to write down the algorithm where you walk down the list while creating a new linked list in the process, wiring up its "next" pointer to the previously visited element. For the first element you traverse, you set the "next" pointer of that element in the reversed list to nil, because it will be the last element in the reversed list. The final result is a pointer to the last visited element, which becomes the head of the reversed list. These kind of questions are stereotypical for programmer interviews (just like "how do you swap to numbers without using a temporary variable?") and therefore Cueball makes a snarky remark that this question is now so archaic that it should be in a historical museum of sorts.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.88\|162.158.88.88]] 14:22, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:33, 3 July 2021
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	:And there's so much power in a modern computer core that, even with a resource-hogging OS, you're probably not going to break it by manually forcing the worst option, unless you're already in danger of stressing the system even with the truly best one. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.93\|141.101.99.93]] 23:44, 1 July 2021 (UTC)		:And there's so much power in a modern computer core that, even with a resource-hogging OS, you're probably not going to break it by manually forcing the worst option, unless you're already in danger of stressing the system even with the truly best one. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.93\|141.101.99.93]] 23:44, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
	Anyone else think the chosen color might be relevant? We're talking about linked lists and the text is written in blue, the traditional color of hyperlinks. In any other comic, I might think it a coincidence, but this is a comic that rarely uses color, and never without a purpose. [[User:Trlkly\|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly\|talk]]) 07:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)		Anyone else think the chosen color might be relevant? We're talking about linked lists and the text is written in blue, the traditional color of hyperlinks. In any other comic, I might think it a coincidence, but this is a comic that rarely uses color, and never without a purpose. [[User:Trlkly\|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly\|talk]]) 07:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
		+	:Blue whiteboard pens are probably the more used 'not black' (because easier on the eye?) but not specifically hued (red for important/'do not do' information, green for softer suggestions or else with comparative 'do do' positive stuff). From personal experience. Not sure if this is relevent, maybe it's just that blue-on-white is what Randall overwhelmingly experiences when he casually wanders in to NASA, JPL, Cern, NIF, Alphabet Inc, Apple Park, Redmond Campus, etc, and looks for casual inspiration on their various walls. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.206\|141.101.98.206]] 18:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

← Older revision		Revision as of 07:15, 3 July 2021
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	:Though these days you're not encouraged to tunnel past the abstractions the higher-level compiler/interpreter will present to you. You could be hard pressed to do anything efficient yourself (like an array-of-pointers approach, or using XOR packing to cut down on memory requirements in a doubly-linked list) and must blindly trust that the original authors of the intermediate builder gave it the wisdom to not be too bad trying to match what you input to a suitably workable pre-anticipated family of data-series methodologies by the time it gets to runtime.		:Though these days you're not encouraged to tunnel past the abstractions the higher-level compiler/interpreter will present to you. You could be hard pressed to do anything efficient yourself (like an array-of-pointers approach, or using XOR packing to cut down on memory requirements in a doubly-linked list) and must blindly trust that the original authors of the intermediate builder gave it the wisdom to not be too bad trying to match what you input to a suitably workable pre-anticipated family of data-series methodologies by the time it gets to runtime.
	:And there's so much power in a modern computer core that, even with a resource-hogging OS, you're probably not going to break it by manually forcing the worst option, unless you're already in danger of stressing the system even with the truly best one. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.93\|141.101.99.93]] 23:44, 1 July 2021 (UTC)		:And there's so much power in a modern computer core that, even with a resource-hogging OS, you're probably not going to break it by manually forcing the worst option, unless you're already in danger of stressing the system even with the truly best one. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.93\|141.101.99.93]] 23:44, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
		+	Anyone else think the chosen color might be relevant? We're talking about linked lists and the text is written in blue, the traditional color of hyperlinks. In any other comic, I might think it a coincidence, but this is a comic that rarely uses color, and never without a purpose. [[User:Trlkly\|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly\|talk]]) 07:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)