Tag Archives: featured

03/30/20

Top 10 FAQs from KubeCon 2019 in San Diego

WHAT DOES NUODB DO?

TL;DR: NuoDB is a distributed SQL database. 

NuoDB is a SQL database, it is fully transactional, fully ACID, and fully consistent. This is a stark contrast to NoSQL solutions that have emerged in the last decade.

NuoDB is distributed, meaning that it is able to scale horizontally and automatically keeps multiple replicas in sync. Having multiple replicas of a database is a strict requirement for any service having 99.99% or better availability guarantees.

Continue reading →
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my Newsletter and/or Feed.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
09/24/18

What I discovered using a simple challenge during interviews

Can coders code?

When I was looking for a simple programming task that I can use to evaluate candidates, I had the following criteria in mind:

  • solvable within 10 min
  • does not require obscure algorithmic knowledge
  • has potential for further discussion
  • not language specific

I went through my list of simple problems (I only considered the easy ones) and I stumbled across Pairs. I instantly realized, that it is the perfect question. There is a brute force solution, the specification can be expanded, we can talk about sorting, hashing, hash collisions, Big-O notation and cases when the input does not fit in memory. Even Bloom Filters are a viable topic of discussion.

My first interview was planned and I was thrilled. I would use the challenge and it would be great! The first three candidates I exposed to the task failed horribly. They could not implement the brute force solution O(n^2) without bugs in the code. I was horrified. Is the industry really this bad? Can programmers really not program?

In the last 3 years I used this little coding task in almost 50 interviews and the failure rate is alarming. Only two people managed to solve it flawlessly. They both accepted the offer and I have been thrilled to work with them ever since. There have been others that got stuck in the weeds but nevertheless showed an ability to think. Kudos to those! I will expand on the definition of flawlessly below.

I adjust the -pass- criteria accordingly to the person’s experience (people who graduated a long time ago might not remember what Big-O is), title (did they code in the last job?), future job duties (are they supposed to code?) and the prowess with which they claim that they know how to program. Support engineers that have had limited exposure to python and shell are fine with something that resembles code. People that have been in the industry for a decade better be ready to go through at least 3 iterations of increasing complexity.

Before reading on, I suggest that you go and solve that challenge. I will wait….

Continue reading →
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my Newsletter and/or Feed.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

05/21/16

Demystifying Virtual Tables in C++ – Part 1 Trivial Constructors

Introduction

This article is part of the C++ Virtual Table Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Don’t expect this article to be an easy read. After each claim, I will provide supporting code in both C++ and assembly.

Recently I was working on a particularly sneaky bug. A thing happened to me in C++, that should not be possible under normal circumstances. By normal, I mean that 1+1 is guaranteed to 2; the sun rises in the East and sets in the West; all water is wet, and the earth is dry. It still happened. Namely: the vptr of a fully constructed virtual object was pointing to the virtual table of its base class. To debug this particular issue one needs to dive deep into the compiler world and into the dreaded waters of assembly.

I hope that I do not have to point out that when I started, I had no clue what is going on. I knew what virtual pointers do and that the compilers are reasonably smart about them. As every modern software engineer, I consulted the web oracle only to realize that there is very little written online. I wanted to know how vptrs and vtables are implemented. Not your typical high-level theory explaining how dynamic dispatch works. I wanted to know what makes it tick. And while doing so, I might improve the world a bit by sharing my journey. So I hopped on my trusted GDB and rode off to the assembly land.

Continue reading →
If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my Newsletter and/or Feed.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
03/30/15

Verbalize Your Thinking!

Solving new challenges can be hard. The harder it is, the more rewarding a solution feels. Sometimes, solutions written by other people work as a miraculous food for thought that opens doors into concepts you never thought of before. I would like this blog to be more than a reference that you know to visit when you are on search for solutions that you can copy-paste into the appropriate test window. I first started it as a self reference to keep track of my learning. The user base grows with every day and I think that we can do something positive with it. Not only will it support our learning process, but it will create interesting networking opportunities as well. Continue reading →

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my Newsletter and/or Feed.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin