Skip to main content

Interview question #1

Since I have been asked to interview experienced PHP programmers, I was preparing few interview questions. I came to know, most of the people ask questions found in the Internet; most of them are like "What is the function used to connect MySQL DB in PHP". Personally, I don't like these types of questions; I'd thought the person must apply ideas what he was taught in colleges--finally I came out with one question:

A product vendor has Quantity Vs. Price data like
1 -> Rs. 50
2 -> Rs. 95
3 -> Rs. 140
.... like upto 1 million data. He wants a system, which gives the price when the quantity is provided. For example, if you provide the quantity value as 2, then it should provide Rs. 95. How this system can be designed?

As expected, all the people said about using database tables and quering on quantity. I have asked them to find out a system which doesn't use databases--provided the accuracy of the system may not be 100%--it may give at least 90% accuracy. To my surprise, none of the people I have interviewed yet didn't provide any solutions.

I must find out few other questions especially for a post of "Web Application Developer".

Comments

Anonymous said…
amount = (45 * quantity ) + 5
R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah said…
For comment#1:Good, if the data are just 3. What if you have about 1 million data? What is the procedure?
Anonymous said…
use Chi Square
R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah said…
For comment#3:You've exceeded my expectation:-) I'd rather expect even a simple keyword. May I know your name?
Anonymous said…
Is it possible to use an associative array(performance?)? - like

$product[$price] = $quantity;
Online Pharmacy said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Sindhuja said…
$amount = (45 * ($quantity -1)) + 50

Popular posts from this blog

BehaviorS.js - An alternative to Behaviour.js, event:Selectors and Low Pro libs for unobtrusive JavaScript programming

BehaviorS.js yet another unobtrusive JavaScript library similar to Behaviour.js and event:Selectors but in implementation uses hash based lookup without extending elements; so presumably it should be faster than the rest. The original script and idea was by JLof ; I extended it for DOMContentLoaded support, optimized a bit to avoid scanning of more depths, and added new rules support. I wanted to document the plug a long time and just got time to do it. For the time being BehaviorS.js is available here Update (2006-09-11) : Coralized the link to BehaviorS.js so as to save the load on free brinkster.com webpage Update (2006-09-27) : If the coralized link to BehaviorS.js doesn't work, use http://www21.brinkster.com/guideme/BehaviorS/ Update (2025-06-07) : Now available in https://github.com/rrjanbiah/behaviorsjs

Save American College, Madurai

This post was written in 2008 and outdated now. For update, please check Save American College, Madurai (Update 2011) Update (2011-01-16) : Save American College, Madurai (Update 2011) I'm highly privileged to have 3 degrees (B.Sc. (Spl. Physics), PGDCA and MCA) from The American College, Madurai, South India . Unlike other "commercial" colleges, American College has given room for poor students and uplifted them. And unlike other "elite" colleges who'd give seat only for "intellectuals", American College has produced geniuses. In the recent months, the saddening thing is that the college is under divide (Principal Vs. Bishop). Here is the email I sent to alumnae lately informing about the informations that I received about the developments: Update (2011-01-16) : Save American College, Madurai (Update 2011) All: I was thinking that the " Save American College " campaign was a FUD . But, when I tried to understand the problem through my...

"A to Z of C" in the book Cimple (ISBN 0070260982)

I was just searching "A to Z of C" in Google Books and found that the book Cimple written by Sasant K Rout has used our code. The irony is that the book was published by Tata McGraw-Hill , who rejected us in final stage stating that it wants us to get endorsement from any IIT professor, which we couldn't. (For the sake of record... IIT Bangalore was linking & supporting "A to Z of C" for long time once it's published over the net; see old IIT page from web.archives.org ) It's just another incident to prove that success isn't a measurable unit; even failed attempts can be appreciated in any other forms.