best book for prepping for tech interview for ruby/rails position
May 24, 2017 1:59 PM Subscribe
i have some interviews lined up for a couple of ruby on rails positions. i've been working with the framework for quite awhile, but have not had a technical interview in a couple of years. the books i am familiar with (eloquent ruby, well-grounded rubyist) don't seem to have recent updates. the one recommended that i haven't read at all (practical o-o design in ruby) is also dated plus i am ambivalent about object oriented design.
this is almost all back-end work and these positions are not senior, as in i would be in charge of a team (ugh), but would be a coder on a small one. any suggestions for recent resources to go through or recommendations for older work that still holds up are welcome. text only for the moment, although i did enjoy ruby tapas while i had a subscription.
this is almost all back-end work and these positions are not senior, as in i would be in charge of a team (ugh), but would be a coder on a small one. any suggestions for recent resources to go through or recommendations for older work that still holds up are welcome. text only for the moment, although i did enjoy ruby tapas while i had a subscription.
I recognize this question is about Ruby resources, but since I don't work in Ruby I can't offer much help there.
As for the tech interview in general, I've interviewed about 100 engineers now, and believe the general sentiment in the industry is one that is agnostic toward language expertise (barring some rare situations where the language, i.e. C compiler is necessary)-- I want to hire someone who understands the fundamentals and how to solve problems. Of course I want them to understand the tools they use, but that's a secondary concern.
In that vein, here are some general tech interview resources that have helped me prepare in the past (and I absolutely second Cracking the Coding Interview book, it's a classic for a reason!)
* Interviewing.io: a low-pressure way to practice technical interviews with real people. It's a free service where you can anonymously interview and practice solving problems through conversations with engineers, and they'll provide feedback to help you develop any weak spots. Tangent- they also do a lot of cool data mining ala okcupid and their blog is worth a read.
* Interview Cake: focuses on data structures and algorithms, and breaks the problem down into step-by-step chunks
* Refresh your systems design knowledge with a brush up here: https://www.hiredintech.com/classrooms/system-design/lesson/60
* I recommend using coding challenge sites- you can chose to solve them with Ruby. Here are a few: HackerRank, Coderbyte, LeetCode (which also has a Mock Interview section)
posted by edgybelle27 at 4:50 PM on May 27, 2017
As for the tech interview in general, I've interviewed about 100 engineers now, and believe the general sentiment in the industry is one that is agnostic toward language expertise (barring some rare situations where the language, i.e. C compiler is necessary)-- I want to hire someone who understands the fundamentals and how to solve problems. Of course I want them to understand the tools they use, but that's a secondary concern.
In that vein, here are some general tech interview resources that have helped me prepare in the past (and I absolutely second Cracking the Coding Interview book, it's a classic for a reason!)
* Interviewing.io: a low-pressure way to practice technical interviews with real people. It's a free service where you can anonymously interview and practice solving problems through conversations with engineers, and they'll provide feedback to help you develop any weak spots. Tangent- they also do a lot of cool data mining ala okcupid and their blog is worth a read.
* Interview Cake: focuses on data structures and algorithms, and breaks the problem down into step-by-step chunks
* Refresh your systems design knowledge with a brush up here: https://www.hiredintech.com/classrooms/system-design/lesson/60
* I recommend using coding challenge sites- you can chose to solve them with Ruby. Here are a few: HackerRank, Coderbyte, LeetCode (which also has a Mock Interview section)
posted by edgybelle27 at 4:50 PM on May 27, 2017
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