Programming Interviews Exposed: New Edition Released

Indulge me for a moment with a post that has nothing to do with AdSense, contextual advertising, or Internet marketing in general. Today is the official release date for a book I co-authored, Programming Interviews Exposed. It's a great addition for every programmer's bookshelf.

Last year I was approached by the publisher of my first three books (see books by Eric Giguere) to revise Programming Interviews Exposed (PIE), which was originally published in 2000, since the two original authors were too busy to do it themselves.

I must admit that I was hesitant to do this at first. PIE was an “instant classic” in the fast-changing world of programming books, an incredibly useful resource for programmers looking for a way to get an edge on landing their next job.

You see, the job interview process for a software development position is very different in many respects. You can't really judge a programmer from their resume, or even from casual conversation, although both do give you some clues as to what they're like. What's important is the way a potential candidate thinks and codes. That's why most organizations who are serious about their programmers require candidates to take one or more (it's not unusual to do 5 to 7 of these in a single day for the same job) “technical” interviews. These are one-on-one interviews conducted by the candidate's peers — other techies already working for the company. The interviewer asks the candidate a series of questions to gauge the candidate's technical proficiency — does he or she really know all the stuff they've listed on their resume? — and how the candidate thinks.

Technical interviews are grueling processes. Typically, the candidate is presented with a simple-sounding problem like counting the number of bits that are “on” in a 32-bit value. But there are constraints on those problems that make them non-trivial. And some of the questions are incredibly challenging. The point of it all is to see how candidates approach problem solving — a fundamental skill for any programmer — and how creative (”out of the box”) they are. And, just as importantly, how well they'd fit in with the company's culture.

My first experience with the technical interview process was when I interviewed for Microsoft back in the fall of 1989. They're not fun. You don't have a lot of time to answer the question and the pressure you feel is very intense. A book like Programming Interviews Exposed would have helped me immensely in preparing for those interviews.

The reason PIE's been so successful is because it takes a comprehensive, let's-talk-through-the-problem approach to finding solutions to the types of problems a programmer would encounter during a technical interview. It's not the questions themselves that matter, but how you answer them. PIE takes each problem and walks the reader through the process used to eventually come at the correct answer. A lot of time is spent discussing why certain answers are better than others and looking at various alternatives. A lot of time is spent just talking about the problem and breaking it down into smaller pieces. A software developer who reads this book in its entirety and takes the time to completely understand each problem and the approach that was taken to find its solution is going to be extremely well prepared for the technical interview process.

OK, enough with the sales pitch. Visit www.piexposed.com for more information on the book, including a list of what's new in the second edition, and join the mailing list for free interviewing tips. You can buy the book from Amazon and from other fine booksellers.

If you're not a programmer, you probably know one or two people who are. Do me a favor and tell them about my new book — that's the best thing you can do for me besides buying a copy! (Thanks!)

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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

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