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! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer 10/17/2016 6 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 7 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 8 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 9 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 10 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements  Acceptance criteria

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 11 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements  Acceptance criteria  The software development process

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 12 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements  Acceptance criteria  The software development process  The software itself

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 13 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements  Acceptance criteria  The software development process  The software itself  My own assumptions about the product

Quality Assurance Engineer => End User Advocate  Build Model of Customer  Taking Model through Software Development Process 10/17/2016 14 Quality Assurance: The Fun Parts! How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer The Fun Parts: With brand-new functionality, testing the…  Software requirements  Acceptance criteria  The software development process  The software itself  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!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

10/17/2016 16 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing: 

10/17/2016 17 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11

10/17/2016 18 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge

10/17/2016 19 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox

10/17/2016 20 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox  Safari on the Mac

10/17/2016 21 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox  Safari on the Mac Automation Development Makes Things Fun Again: 

10/17/2016 22 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox  Safari on the Mac Automation Development Makes Things Fun Again:   Write software to automatically check the old stuff is still working

10/17/2016 23 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox  Safari on the Mac Automation Development Makes Things Fun Again:   Write software to automatically check the old stuff is still working  Selenium WebDriver to emulate the user workflows

10/17/2016 24 QA: The Not So Fun Parts!  How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Regression Testing:  Checking the old functionality still works in:  IE9, IE10, IE11  MS Edge  Chrome, Firefox  Safari on the Mac Automation Development Makes Things Fun Again:   Write software to automatically check the old stuff is still 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 How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

The Technical Interview Would Be Based Around Automation Development Experience 10/17/2016 26 Before My First Technical Interviews: Incorrect Assumptions How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer Assumption #1:

The Technical Interview Would Be Based Around Automation Development Experience 10/17/2016 27 Before My First Technical Interviews: Incorrect Assumptions How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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 How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

A developer instructed me to go to the whiteboard and answer the following: 10/17/2016 29 The Technical Interview How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

A developer instructed me to go to the whiteboard and answer the following: 10/17/2016 30 The Technical Interview How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer “Using your favorite programming language: Write a method that checks to see if a given word is a palindrome.”

A developer instructed me to go to the whiteboard and answer the following: 10/17/2016 31 The Technical Interview How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer “Using your favorite programming language: Write a method that checks to see if a given word is a palindrome. “Example palindromes: ‘noon’ and ‘racecar’.”

10/17/2016 32How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard 10/17/2016 33 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … 10/17/2016 34 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! 10/17/2016 35 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! • Scribbled something down.... 10/17/2016 36 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! • Scribbled something down.... • Erased it. 10/17/2016 37 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! • Scribbled something down.... • Erased it. • Scribbled something down... 10/17/2016 38 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! • Scribbled something down.... • Erased it. • Scribbled something down... • Stared blankly. 10/17/2016 39 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

• Blank Staring at Whiteboard • Developers waiting for me to do … ANYTHING!! • Scribbled something down.... • Erased it. • Scribbled something down... • Stared blankly. • Finished only half of the problem. 10/17/2016 40 And then this happened… How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only: 10/17/2016 41 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only:  Questions focused solely on automation 10/17/2016 42 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only:  Questions focused solely on automation  Interview demoed writing an automation script 10/17/2016 43 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only:  Questions focused solely on automation  Interview demoed writing an automation script Their response: 10/17/2016 44 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only:  Questions focused solely on automation  Interview demoed writing an automation script Their response: “All employees are expected to meet a certain minimum standard of coding knowledge, even for quality assurance positions”. 10/17/2016 45 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

I joked with the interviewers. If only:  Questions focused solely on automation  Interview demoed writing an automation script Their response: “All employees are expected to meet a certain minimum standard of coding knowledge, even for quality assurance positions”. 10/17/2016 46 Technical Interview: The Aftermath How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer … These types of questions asked in 10 out of 12 of my interviews!

10/17/2016 47 New Requirements For Automation Developers How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

 Screening for Basic Fluency in a Programming Language 10/17/2016 48 New Requirements For Automation Developers How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

 Screening for Basic Fluency in a Programming Language  Automation Developers asked same interview questions as Software Developers 10/17/2016 49 New Requirements For Automation Developers How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

 Screening for Basic Fluency in a Programming Language  Automation Developers asked same interview questions as Software Developers  Automation Developers are Software Developers 10/17/2016 50 New Requirements For Automation Developers How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

 Screening for Basic Fluency in a Programming Language  Automation Developers asked same interview questions as 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 For Automation Developers How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course: 10/17/2016 52 How to Become Fluent in Coding? How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course:  Members of the Boston Public Library get a free subscription to Lynda.com. 10/17/2016 53 How to Become Fluent in Coding? How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course:  Members of the Boston Public Library get a free subscription 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 How to Become Fluent in Coding? How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course:  Members of the Boston Public Library get a free subscription 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  Coursera.org by Duke, Stanford, Johns Hopkins 10/17/2016 55 How to Become Fluent in Coding? How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

Step 1: Take a Refresher Course:  Members of the Boston Public Library get a free subscription 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  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 How to Become Fluent in Coding? How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

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. 10/17/2016 57How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

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. 10/17/2016 58How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

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 59How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer

10/17/2016 60 During the Coding Interview How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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?

10/17/2016 61How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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? 

10/17/2016 62How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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?

10/17/2016 63How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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? 4. Come up with a solution Can the candidate write clear and concise code?

10/17/2016 64How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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? 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 How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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

10/17/2016 67 Appendix: Palindrome Solutions How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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:

10/17/2016 68How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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 How to pass a coding interview as an automation developer 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

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