Refactoring the Technical Interview
summary
Argues for replacing contrived puzzles with real diffs and production snippets, showing candidates read and improve code rather than recite algorithms; uses ActiveRecord and Sequel examples, a live MFA refactor that ultimately removed method from the highest‑churn file, and a churn vs complexity report from Ruby Critic. Cites a 90% reading 10% writing heuristic, demonstrates database tradeoffs, hidden bugs from string concatenation, and measurable complexity reduction after the refactor.
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chapters (36)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:16Introduction
- 0:59Jack Danger
- 1:50Challenges
- 2:34Why refactor
- 3:53The Joel Test
- 5:08Analogy
- 5:59Drills
- 8:20Why ask these questions
- 9:51litmus test
- 10:23interview prep
- 10:44best practices
- 11:06what is the point
- 11:37interview expectations
- 13:05Joel test
- 13:21implicit
- 13:36reading
- 14:21new problem
- 14:36your code
- 15:21examples
- 16:02reading code
- 16:47sorting by packages
- 18:36directed questions
- 20:35human understanding
- 22:54naive solution
- 23:36sequel solution
- 24:14trivia question
- 25:22instance variable name
- 25:51Recap
- 27:34Scale
- 28:34Hot off the press
- 30:08New object
- 31:41How to curate
- 32:48churn vs complexity
- 33:24confidential code
- 33:56opensource
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