Just launched! Get 30% off The Imposter's Frontend Accelerator Get It Now

Basic Sorting Algorithms

7 years ago | Interview Prep Videos
You will likely *never* need to implement a sorting algorithm - but understanding how they work could come in handy at some point. Interviews and workarounds for framework problems come to mind.

You will likely never have to write a search algorithm, except when you're in an interview. In fact, just yesterday, I was talking to a colleague of mine at Microsoft (a super talented engineer) and he shared with me that he was asked to write a Bubble Sort routine! On a white board!

Interviewers ask this question because they want to see how you write code. If they ask you to write Bubble Sort, consider yourself lucky! They're giving you a softball.

Not everyone can remember this algorithm so be sure to ask questions... it's OK. Also: remember they just want to see how you think through a problem, so chill out and answer as best you can.

Divide and Conquer

As you go through these sorting and searching algorithms, see if you can spot the "divide and conquer" approach being used. This concept is the foundation of so many optimizations in computer science - database indexes, for instance.

Divide and conquer is algorithmic which is a massive improvement over linear time complexity. Do you know what that means and why? We'll get into it!

There's More...

The Imposter's Frontend Accelerator

JavaScript client frameworks are powerful and help you create an amazing experience for your end user. Unfortunately, learning how to use them sucks.

🤖 A Real World Approach to Playwright

Writing tests can be tricky, especially using a more complex tool like Playwright. I took some time and dug in over the last year and I'm happy I did.

What Is Your Yeet Threshold?

Solving problems is what we do, but sometimes the solution is to burn it all down and start again, learning from your mistakes. How do you make this choice?