All About Binary Search Trees, In Java

If you’re pursuing a degree in computer science, you’ll probably experience Binary Trees in one of your first semesters of school. After seeing them in one of those first semesters, you probably won’t see them again until you’re interviewing for a job.

While interviewing for software engineering or programming positions, you may get many questions regarding Binary Trees and Binary Search Trees. Take this as a refresher in case this is a subject you might have forgotten over the years.

Solve A 2D Array Maze Using Recursion And JavaScript

To continue on the topic of popular interview questions for software engineering positions, I figured it might be appropriate to go over solving a maze that was created using a two-dimensional array.

A maze created from a 2D array can be solved using recursion similar to like we did for the previous Fibonacci article I made.

Validate Bracket And Parenthesis Combos Using Stacks

Job interviews for software engineering and other programming positions can be tough. There are too many things to study, and even then it still might not be enough. Previously I had written about a common Fibonacci number algorithm and finding duplicate values in array.

Those skill refreshers were written in JavaScript. This time we are going to take a turn and validate bracket combinations using the Java programming language.

Calculate If Duplicates Exist In An Array Using JavaScript

You’ll notice previously I did a post regarding the Fibonacci number, a popular interview question for programming jobs. To keep up with this trend of interview questions, we’re going to look into the different ways of finding duplicates in an array.

Finding array duplicates is a good question because it tests your knowledge of algorithm design and your understanding of various time complexities.

The Fibonacci Sequence Printed With JavaScript

If you’re familiar with the material I write on my blog, you’ll probably be confused at why I’m making such a post. Anyone who has been a part of a Computer Science program at a university will probably have dabbled with Fibonacci in their first semester of school. However, many Computer Science graduates don’t realize that this is a common job interview question regardless of the company or job level that you’re applying for. Whether you’re applying for a new graduate position or a senior level position, there is a good chance you’re going to be screened with a question on this topic.

With that said, I think this can be a refresher to anyone going through the interview process for a programming or software engineering position.

Parse An XML Response With Node.js

A while back I wrote an article on how to parse XML using PHP. Since then I’ve slowly been transitioning away from PHP, yet XML continues to be a burden that I can’t get rid of.

Not all APIs return JSON so it is the application developers responsibility to handle the XML. Lucky for us there is a convenient package for Node.js called xml2js that will handle all the parsing for us.

Use Grunt To Lint And Uglify Your JavaScript Project

JavaScript is a forgiving language unlike Java or C#. Because of this, we can’t always trust that our code is correct. I don’t mean that the logic may not be correct, I’m talking about syntax and structure.

Lint via Wikipedia:

…modern lint checkers are often used to find code that doesn’t correspond to certain style guidelines. They can also be used as simple debuggers for common errors, or hard to find errors such as heisenbugs

In addition to needing to lint your code for errors, you may also consider compressing and obfuscating your source code. This can be done through the process of uglification or minification.

Minification via Wikipedia:

Minification (also minimisation or minimization), in computer programming languages and especially JavaScript, is the process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing its functionality.

Linting and minification are two tasks that can easily be run with a task runner such as Grunt or Gulp. In this example, I’ll be demonstrating how to use Grunt to run these tasks.