On 6/4/07, Daniel M. [email protected] wrote:
James Edward G. II [email protected] writes:
On Jun 1, 2007, at 10:37 PM, Morton G. wrote:
I would not be surprised if this quiz produces the most submissions
of any quiz ever.Good prediction. You were right.
And yet, no one has so far posted a solution involving callcc or
threads. (unless I missed it)
and inject (unless I midded it;)
On 6/4/07, Ball, Donald A Jr (Library) [email protected]
wrote:
puts (1…100).map{|n|n%15>0?n%5>0?n%3>0?n:‘fizz’:‘buzz’:‘fizzbuzz’}
- donald
That takes care of inject, what a great response time Donald ;)!
Robert
“Robert D.” [email protected] writes:
and inject (unless I midded it;)
Aside from the one posted just after you sent this, there actually
have been one or two solutions using inject already, but nothing that
really seems to take advantage of it. Of course, when I try to
construct such a solution, I can’t do much better - inject is a
relatively specialized tool, and works best when the output of inject
is then useful in some material way, rather than when it’s being
executed purely for its side effects.
I’m going to think on this some more…
CHubas wrote:
…
The first question that jumps into my mind is: why would a job
interviewer wanted me to write me such a program? What the heck is a
‘FizzBuzz’?
Didn’t you hear? Google is developing a soft drink containing nothing
but carbonation and caffeine.
Aside from the one posted just after you sent this, there actually
have been one or two solutions using inject already, but nothing that
really seems to take advantage of it. Of course, when I try to
construct such a solution, I can’t do much better - inject is a
relatively specialized tool, and works best when the output of inject
is then useful in some material way, rather than when it’s being
executed purely for its side effects.
IMO, the only thing you would need inject here is to store the output
of the program in a string rather than just print it. So, consider it
another solution.
str = (1…100).inject(’’) do |s, n|
s + (
if (n3 = n % 3 == 0) & (n5 = n % 5 == 0)
“FizzBuzz”
elsif n3
“Fizz”
elsif n5
“Buzz”
else
n.to_s
end
) + “/n”
end
puts str
Excuse my “/n”, but I cannot find the backslash in this crappy
computer ><
Didn’t you hear? Google is developing a soft drink containing nothing
but carbonation and caffeine.
Yay! Google drinks!
Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. - Vince
Lombardi
Didn’t you hear? Google is developing a soft drink
containing nothing but carbonation and caffeine.
I hear the original name was "Gurgle", but apparently they're shying
away from the “cute but meaningless” names now.
On Jun 4, 2007, at 3:24 AM, Robert D. wrote:
Honestly the idea is awesome, but he should have taken care to get the
syntax right. I think it is not a good solution in the exact context
but a good distribution for us to have fun.
If I were on the hiring side in the scenario put forth in the quiz
description, I would look more favorably on a job candidate who came
up with Phillips’ solution than one who came up with a more
pedestrian one such my own.
Einstein who said “As simple(*) as possible, but not simpler!”
the last part being quite irrelevant in our case.
BUT does the merciless application of KISS give you the warm fuzzy
feeling?
No, but it makes me laugh when I see it. I admire Phillips’ solution
not because I’m a big fan of KISS[*] but for its zen-like qualities
– the out-of-the-box thinking it displays.
Regards, Morton
[*] Regard the phrase
pursuing the KISS principle right into the ground
and visualize what happens in a WW II movie when one airplane pursues
another into the ground.
And I don’t like the rock group either.
On 6/4/07, Morton G. [email protected] wrote:
On Jun 4, 2007, at 3:24 AM, Robert D. wrote:
Honestly the idea is awesome, but he should have taken care to get the
syntax right. I think it is not a good solution in the exact context
but a good distribution for us to have fun.If I were on the hiring side in the scenario put forth in the quiz
description, I would look more favorably on a job candidate who came
up with Phillips’ solution than one who came up with a more
pedestrian one such my own.
Perhaps a particular potential employer might see it that way. I
suspect that most wouldn’t, although the good ones would take it as in
indication not of programming but of interpersonal skills.
The elephant in the room in the situation posited by this quiz is that
after a candidate provides some solution, it becomes more of a
psychological compatibility test than a programming skill test.
Some employers/clients might be looking for an employee/consultant who
can program and communicate clearly, probably a good choice in most
situations.
Others might have a liking for overly clever programmers. This might
be a good choice for them, more likely not. Personally I’d rather work
for/with the first kind of employer/client than the latter. I tend to
view a interview, from either side of the table, as a dialog searching
for compatibility rather a one-sided interrogation.
Fred P. gives a nice whimsical ‘solution’, it’s clever and funny
with the quirky take things literally with an unexpected twist sense
of humor which characterized the late great Gracie Allen, a style
which I personally love and emulate.
Now if I were the potential hirer, thought this whole fizzbuzz test
were a good idean, which is not likely by the way, and I got such a
reply, I’d probably respond by saying “okay, wise guy, now show me how
you’d really do it.”
Some of us can program well and communicate clearly, others can write
tricky code, some of us can be humorous. Each of us can all probably
do all three to varying extents. The trick is choosing the right
combination for the occasion, whether we are interviewing or on the
job.
–
Rick DeNatale
My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
On 6/4/07, Morton G. [email protected] wrote:
Einstein who said “As simple(*) as possible, but not simpler!”
the last part being quite irrelevant in our case.
BUT does the merciless application of KISS give you the warm fuzzy
feeling?No, but it makes me laugh when I see it. I admire Phillips’ solution
not because I’m a big fan of KISS[*] but for its zen-like qualities
– the out-of-the-box thinking it displays.
Phillips’ solution isn’t so much of an example of KISS as it is a
sense of humor. We can all build mountains one grain of sand at a
time 
In any case; one point for satisfying (almost) the criteria and one
point for being the sole person to do it that way (I doubt anyone else
thought of that solution).
f_=b_=nil
callcc { |o|
loop do
o = callcc {|i|f_=i; o[:Fizz]}
2.times{o = callcc{|i|f_=i;o[]}}
end
}
callcc { |o,n|
loop do
o,n = callcc {|i|b_=i; o["#{n}Buzz"]}
4.times{o,n = callcc{|i|b_=i;o[n]}}
end
}
f = lambda{callcc{|i|f_[i]}}
b = lambda{|n|callcc{|i|b_[i,n]}}
1.upto(100){|i|puts b[f[]]||i}
a = nil
f = Thread.new { loop { sleep 3; print :Fizz; a = nil } }
b = Thread.new { sleep 0.2; loop { sleep 5; print :Buzz; a = nil } }
sleep 0.5
1.upto(100) {|i| a=i; sleep 1; puts “#{a}”}
a=’//////’.gsub(’’,‘Fizz’).split(’/’)
b=’//////’.gsub(’’,‘Buzz’).split(’/’)
class Array
def roll
self.push(self.shift).last
end
end
(1…101).select{|n|(n%5)*(n%3)>0}.inject(0){|r,n|
puts “#{a.roll}#{b.roll}” while n>r+=1
puts n if n<99
r
}
(1…100).inject(“x”){|p,n|
p.sub(/^((?:(?:x[^x]){3}))$/,’\1Fizz’).
sub(/^((?:(?:x[^x]){5}))$/,’\1Buzz’).
sub(/x$/,“x#{n}”) + ‘x’
}.sub(/^x/,’’).gsub(/x/,"\n").display
On Jun 5, 6:01 am, “[email protected]” [email protected] wrote:
I do not think there is a lot of room for cleverness in the FizzBuzz
problem. (Actually, I hope I am wrong and we see lots more
suggestions for Extra Fun like Peter’s.) My understanding is that
FizzBuzz was intended to screen out candidates that could not come
up with working code in a few minutes.Regards,
Paul.
As the last few days have shown, there are clever ways of solving
FizzBuzz. However, IMHO, there are very few that would be appropriate
for the stated scenario of a job interview.
My tendency would be to create the simplest thing that could possibly
work in clear and readable and maintainable code. After all,
employers want someone who is smart, but also want someone who gets
things done efficiently. Possibly, with just the right interviewer, I
might discus various solutions pros and cons, which might be optimized
for particular scenarios, etc.
Maybe I just haven’t interviewed the right sort of employers that
would appreciate such creativity…
Regards,
Paul.
I disagree. I challenged several of my coworkers to solve FizzBuzz a
few weeks ago. All of the solutions were pretty much the same except
the one from our lead DBA. He solved the problem in a stored
procedure without using a cursor. It was exceptionally clever and
totally horrific at the same time. We gave him the “Most
Inappropriate Use of Set Theory” award.
On 6/5/07, Paul N. [email protected] wrote:
Maybe I just haven’t interviewed the right sort of employers that
would appreciate such creativity…Regards,
Paul.
Actually I feel that somehow - sorry I have said this before, but I am
not sure it was heard 
- this is about a job, yes but with R u b y.
And if I were to hire a Ruby programmer and the guy just writes some
Java/C/Perl/OCaml or whatever code, expressed in Ruby, will I take
him?
So whatever is said about simple and maintainable and psychological
impact for sure is clever stuff coming from experience I am lacking.
But many of you are forgetting the R u b y part nonetheless.
Cheers
Robert
On Jun 5, 2007, at 9:29 AM, Rob B. wrote:
If I were giving this test, extra credit would be earned for
knowing that i%15 == 0 is equivalent to (i%3==0 && i%5==0) because
I can’t imagine a programmer being very good without a firm grasp
of some math as basic as this.
I guess you wouldn’t hire me. I used the double-test form because I
thought it was self documenting.
James Edward G. II
On Jun 5, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Robert D. wrote:
Regards,
employers want someone who is smart, but also want someone who getsBut many of you are forgetting the R u b y part nonetheless.
Cheers
Robert–
You see things; and you say Why?
But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
– George Bernard Shaw
Regardless of how simple or clever the code, if it isn’t
syntactically correct or fails to use common Ruby idioms, it fails as
an interview response.
i=1; while i <= 100; …; i += 1; end # BZZZT! Sorry, thanks for
playing.
1.upto(100) do |i| … end # DING!
(1…100).each {|i| … } # DING!
Any more than one bug and I’d say the interview was over (and ANY bug
if actually using irb or ruby to run the code would be too many).
The exact format of the output wasn’t rigorously defined so I’d
expect a reasonable interpretation (unless the solution offered
couldn’t be simply and obviously changed to add/remove spacing,
newlines, quotes, capitalization, etc.).
If I were giving this test, extra credit would be earned for knowing
that i%15 == 0 is equivalent to (i%3==0 && i%5==0) because I can’t
imagine a programmer being very good without a firm grasp of some
math as basic as this.
If the interviewee immediately starting golfing, that’d lose credit,
but noticing simple, incremental improvement would be positive. For
example, noticing the use of case…end’s value as an expression:
case
when i%15 == 0
puts “FizzBuzz”
when i%3 == 0
puts …
becoming:
puts case
when i%15 == 0 : “FizzBuzz”
when i%3 == 0 : …
Overall, the volume of responses to the quiz is interesting only when
it doesn’t degrade to golfing. (My own straight-forward solution
incrementally shrinks down to 69 bytes, but I have no interest in
squeezing it any more – it wouldn’t be readable – and anyone who
used the ?d == 100 trick in an interview should be shown the door!)
-Rob
On Sunday 03 June 2007 11:32, Joshua B. wrote:
Mathematically speaking, finding the shortest/optimal solution to any
programming challenge is an NP problem. It might be fun to do a follow
up quiz where the goal is to write a code generator that can find the
elusive 56 byte golfing solution to the FizzBuzz quiz. If one were to
simply write a random ASCII string generator and test every possible 56
byte string, it would take less than 95^56 (or 5.656e110) iterations……or would that quiz be too hard?
Its much worse than NP - its uncomputable. You’d run into the halting
problem doing the tests.
I’ve attempted to create random code generator before, but soon gave up.
Will there be any ways to optimize the generator so that we can
practically
use it?
2007/6/5, Jesse M. [email protected]:
On Jun 5, 2007, at 10:43 AM, James Edward G. II wrote:
James Edward G. II
I said “extra credit” (you didn’t use the ?d thing, right?
It’ll be interesting to see how you summarize all of this.
Thanks James,
-Rob
Is there a short circuit AND in ruby?
Just wondering…
Here is my solution:
for i in 1…100
mod3 = (i % 3 == 0)
mod5 = (i % 5 == 0)
print “Fizz” if mod3
print “Buzz” if mod5
print i if !mod3 && !mod5
puts “”
end
Dan Finnie
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