Dear all,

I am applying for a software engineer job position (C++).

I knew I am going to be grilled with two types of problems at this stage:

(1) C++ Talk or Paper test questions.
(2) C++ programming/coding test questions.

The first one is more about concept, and everything is on paper. There will be no real programming involved.

The second one is going to be more horrible. Because I will have to do the real programming, with or without people monitoring me, and it's within 1-2 hours time limit, and my code has to compile and has to work. Otherwise the interviewer will not even want to look at my code. This is something like working out something under pressure. It's hard because programming involves a lot of debugging and if under pressure, I can be easily stuck in the debugging... On top of meeting basic requirements, they will then look at speed and the smartness of coding... etc.

I decided to use Visual C++. The questions involved in this second type will be some computer problem solving involving some algorithm and some data-structure. I guess it will not be a huge implementation of Black-Red Tree, etc., because I guess that's not doable with 1-2 hours? Of course it will not be too easy something like sorting too...

So my question is: how to prepare and practice for the second type of questions? And are there any good practice problems that can be worked out in 1-2 hours?

Thank you!