Brane Enterprises Software Developer Intern Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Hackerrank is a good paltform and very flexible, our webcam was turned on in order to prevent students from cheating

Q1. Find the lone set bit
You are given a single non-negative integer ‘N’ who’s binary representation consists of a single ‘1’ digit and the rest of the digits are ‘0’s. Your task is to find the position of th...read more
Ans.  Approach 1
If we observe a little, we can clearly see that only those integers, which can be represented as a power of 2 have a single set bit in their binary equivalent, and rest either have 0 or more than 1 set bits. Now, we only have to work on the integers which are a power of 2. We will start from the LSB end or the rightmost bit, and check every bit one by one.
 
• We are given a function findSetBit(), which tak...read more
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Q2. Count Ways To Reach The N-th Stairs
You have been given a number of stairs. Initially, you are at the 0th stair, and you need to reach the Nth stair. Each time you can either climb one step or two steps. Y...read more
Ans. Brute Force
One basic approach is to explore all possible steps which can be climbed with either taking one step or two steps. So at every step, we have two options to climb the stairs either we can climb with one step, or we can climb with two steps. So the number of ways  can be recursively defined as :
countDistinctWayToClimbStair ( currStep, N ) = countDistinctWayToClimbStair ( currStep+1, N ) + countDistinctWay...read more
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Round duration - 40 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

Round was conducted on zoom platform. There were 40 students there and then each one of them were assigned break-out rroms for interviews.

Q1. Basic HR Questions
What are your future goals? Tell me about your short term and long-term goals. 
What motivates you?
Ans. 
Tip 1 : try to be optimistic and answer all the questions in a positive manner
Tip 2 : answer these kind of questions with positive intent and try to look at the brighter side of any situation
Tip 3 : express yourself with honesty; your body language should look compatible with what you are speaking and trying to convey to the other person
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This round was scheduled for 9am in the morning. The test environment was pretty good . I didn't face any issues on the HireVeu platform. The first test was of Aptitude and then in next section it was Technical MCQ's. The level of questions were mid to high level of difficulty.

Q1. DBMS Questions
What is DML and DDL?
Write an SQL query to print the FIRST_NAME from Worker table after replacing ‘a’ with ‘A’.
Write an SQL query to print details of the Workers whose FIRST_NAME contains ‘a’.
...read more
Ans. 
Tip 1: Do practice SQL Queries
Tip 2: Read Database Normalisation and Transaction.
Tip 3: Read Raghu Ram Krishnan thoroughly
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

The exam was on the same Platform. The first question was about the most difficult Project I've worked on. I have to record a video in that particular platform and then move to the next questions. There was option for a demo video of 1 minute in which you can practice your answers and then can record your answer in the next video of max 5 minutes. The next 2 question were Coding Problems of moderate difficulty and you've to record your approach and then proceed towards solving the code and then record a video stating if you succeed or not and what better could you've done to make it work.

Q1. Sum Of N Digit Palindromes
You are given an integer 'N'. Your task is to return the sum of all N-digit numbers which are palindrome. A number is said to be palindrome if the number formed by reve...read more
Ans. 
Run a loop from 10^(n-1) to 10^(n) – 1 and check when the current number is palindrome or not. If it is, adds its value to answer.
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round was scheduled for 3pm. The interviewer was quite friendly. He asked about me and told me to relax and then answer. He started with asking questions from my Project and how the ideas behind the Project. My Project was related to Deadlock So he asked whether I can implement my Project on any environment. I answered . Then one of my internship Project was related to Web development so He asked me about the backend of the Project. He gave me a few SQL queries and some general DBMS concepts based on the response about using Mysql in the Project. He asked me a few things about AWS and Cloud Computing which I answered. At last he asked some LINUX commands and corrected me once and was satisfied with my answers.

Q1. OS Questions
1) What is Kernel?
2) What is Deadlock?
3) Why you use Binary semaphores instead of Counting Semaphores?
4) What is threads? What is hardware thread?
5) What is TLB?
Ans. 
Tip 1 : Read Galvin for OS thoroughly
Tip 2 : Practice MCQ's from GFG OS QUIZ Section
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Q2. DBMS & Trees Questions
1) Explain DDL VS DML.
2) Explain Normalization
3) B+ Trees and it's working.
Ans. 
Tip 1 : Do practice SQL queries
Tip 2 : Give answers to Normalisation questions with examples for each
Tip 3 : Keep a paper with you while giving interview from home. Comes handy when I tried explaining B+ trees to him.
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Round duration - 150 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This first round was the Online test which was 1 Hour 95 Minutes Long. It was Divided
as Follows.

1. Aptitude Section (Arithmetic + Analytical) 14 Questions – 26 Minutes
2. Technical MCQs( Computer Science) 14 Questions – 19 Minutes
3. Coding Question – 20 Minutes
4. Coding Question – 30 Minutes
5. Coding Questions :

Q1. Water
You are given an array 'ARR' of positive integers, each of which represents the number of liters of water in that particular bucket, we have to make the liters of water in every bucket equal.
...read more
Ans. Using Sorting
 The main idea is to use sorting the given array in reverse order and then check for the candidates for the water to be removed.
 
• Sort the array(waters array) in descending order.
• Assuming every bucket as a candidate finds the minimum amount of water needs to be removed. The result will be a minimum amount of water, among that.
• Every bucket which is on the left of the current bucket has more water t...read more
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Q2. K Max Sum Combinations
You are given two arrays/lists ‘A’ and ‘B’ of size ‘N’ each. You are also given an integer ‘K’. You have to find the ‘K’ maximum and valid sum combinations from all the possible sum ...read more
Ans. Brute
Generate all the possible sum combinations using two loops. Store the sum of all the sum combinations in an array/list and sort the array/list in descending order. 
 
Finally, return the ‘K’ max sub-combinations from that array/list.
 
The Steps are as follows :
 
1. Create an array/list ‘tempArray’ of size ('N' * ‘N’).
2. Traverse the given arrays using two loops.
   • In the outer loop, traverse the given array...read more
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Round duration - 150 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was an Online F2F Technical Round conducted on CodePair : Hackerrank. So, Basically You have to Run and Submit ( Pass All Test cases) in the Interview Round also (Like normal Coding Test) in Codepair: Hackerrank & along with that You should have to explain your Code and Approach to the Interviewers.

Q1. Minimum Fountains
There is a one-dimensional garden of length 'N'. On each of the positions from 0 to 'N', there is a fountain, and this fountain’s water can reach up to a certain range as ...read more
Ans. Dynamic programming
• For every fountain, we can try to find the pair area = (left, right), where left and right are the leftmost and the rightmost index respectively where the current fountain can reach.For every index 'I' = 0 to 'I' = 'N' -1, 'LEFT' = max(0, 'I' - 'ARR'['I']) and  'right' = min('I' + ('ARR'['I'] + 1), 'N').
• Now we can sort the array of pairs in non-decreasing order according to 'LEFT' to find the mi...read more
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Round duration - 150 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was also an Online F2F Technical Round conducted on Codepair : Hackerrank.
Dynamic Programming Based Not So Easy Level:
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II
Dynamic Programming Based Not So Medium Level
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock with Cooldown
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock with Transaction Fee
Dynamic Programming Based Hard Level
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock III
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock IV

They asked me a Lot of Questions like:
How did you arrive at this Solution ?
Why is this Approach Right ?
Can You do this in Better time & space complexities ? (Although I have done in Best time Complexity but they asked this to check my confidence level on my codes).
A lot of Variants based on Constraints.

Q1. Best Time To Buy and Sell Stock
You have been given an array 'PRICES' consisting of 'N' integers where PRICES[i] denotes the price of a given stock on the i-th day. You are also given an in...read more
Ans. Recursion
The main idea is to use recursion to reduce the big problem into several smaller subproblems.
 
Algorithm
 
• We will call a maxProfit function that returns us the maximum profit we can get from the array starting from i (here i denotes the starting index of PRICES) to N - 1. We will use a bool variable buy. If buy == true it denotes that we had bought a stock and now we can’t buy another until we sell it ...read more
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Q2. Buy and Sell Stock
You are Harshad Mehta’s friend. He told you the price of a particular stock for the next ‘N’ days. You can either buy or sell a stock. Also, you can only complete at most 2-transactions....read more
Ans. Recursion
This problem can be solved by solving its subproblems and then combining the solutions of the solved subproblems to solve the original problem. We will do this using recursion.
Basically, we have to buy the stock at the minimum possible price and sell at the maximum possible price, keeping in mind that we have to sell the stock before buying it again.
 
 
Below is the detailed algorithm: 
 
1. Call ...read more
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

It was conducted in the evening at around 7:00 p.m.
The hackerrank environment is clearly the best for conducting coding exams as it provides a decent interface for debugging and testing purposes.
There were 3 questions- 1 of easy level and 2 of medium level.

Q1. Pythagorean Triplets
You are given an array of n integers (a1, a2,....,an), you need to find if the array contains a pythagorean triplet or not.
An array is said to have a pythagorean triplet if there ex...read more
Ans. Brute Force
• One simple naive solution is to try every possible triplet present in the array as a candidate for the pythagorean triplet.
• So, we simply run three nested loops, and pick three integers and check if they follow the property given in the problem statement( i.e for three integers a,b and c a^2 b^2 = c^2).
• If we find any required triplet, we return true. Otherwise, if we can't find any valid triplet, we return fa...read more
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Q2. Ways to arrange balls
Given ‘a’ balls of type ‘A’, ‘b’ balls of type ‘B’ and ‘c’ balls of type ‘C’. You need to find the total number of ways to arrange the balls in a straight line such that adjacent ball...read more
Ans. Recursion
This problem can be solved by solving its subproblems and then combining the solutions of the solved subproblems to solve the original problem. We will do this using recursion. We will keep track of the next ball we want to add in the line. Initially, we have three options, to begin with. We can start by adding A or B or C. After that, at each step, we have two options. We can find the number of ways to make t...read more
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Q3. LCS of three strings
Given three strings A, B and C, the task is to find the length of the longest common sub-sequence in all the three strings A, B and C.
A subsequence of a string is a new string gener...read more
Ans. 
1. It was a variation of a direct standard problem so I solved it on the go though it was of medium level.
2. The exact approach I applied is given in the link given in the problem statement.
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Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The round was conducted on CodePair platform which provides a IDE along with a video call for interviews.
There were 2 interviewers and both were friendly.
I was first asked about the various subjects I have studied in my curriculum. Then I was asked about my favourite programming language to which I answered Python.
After this, they asked various confusing questions based on function calling, argument passing and pass by object reference concept in Python. 
Then they asked about the implementation of dictionary in Python and wanted me to design one with the help of lists(arrays) and optimize its search, add and delete operations. (Could be done with hashing and probing).
Then they asked questions from subjects like Computer Architecture and Theory of Computation (Basic questions were asked so you should just remember the key topics in the subject).

Q1. Delete a Node from Linked List
You have been given a linked list of integers. Your task is to write a function that deletes a node from a given position, 'POS'.
Note :
Assume that the Indexing fo...read more
Ans. 
1. Firstly I asked the interviewer if there was any other node reference given in the linked list.
2. Then I asked if it was a singly or doubly linked list.
3. After that, I was stuck as I was attempting to delete the node memory from the linked list but on expressing my problem the interviewer guided me that I should just delete the data in that node.
4. Then I instantly replied with an algorithm to swap the data of the ...read more
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Round duration - 75 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

This was a pure coding round consisting of three questions where time allotted for one easy question was 15 minutes while the other two questions were to solved in 30 minutes each.
total time = 15+30+30= 75 minutes

Q1. Set Bits
Write a program to count the number of 1's in the binary representation of an integer.
Input format :
 The only line of input contains a single integer N.
Output format :
The only line of...read more
Ans. Looping through bits Approach
• Here we are converting the number into binary, and during the conversion, we are checking the remainder part.
• If it is 1, then we increment the value of count by 1.
Space Complexity: O(1)Explanation:
O(1)
 
We are using constant extra space.
Time Complexity: O(logn)Explanation:
O(log(N)), where ‘N’ is the given integer.

Since we are iterating through each bit of binary representation of the ...read more
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Q2. Longest Increasing Subsequence
'N' students are standing in a row. You are given the height of every student standing in the row. Your task is to find the longest strictly increasing subsequence of...read more
Ans. Brute force approach
The idea is to find strictly increasing subsequences for all the elements of the array once including the elements in the sequence and once excluding it. In order to do this, we use a recursive function, 'LIS_HELPER' which returns the length of LIS possible from the current element (maximum of the lengths of subsequences once including the current element and once excluding it).
Algorithm: 
• Recur...read more
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Round duration - 45 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

There were 2 interviewers and the round was carried out on code pair platform of HackerRank

Q1. Burning Candles
Prateek is a kindergarten teacher. He wants to give some candies to the children in his class. All the children stand in a line and each of them has a grade according to his or her perform...read more
Ans. Brute Force
There can be four cases :
 
CASE 1: STUDENTS[i - 1]  > STUDENTS[i]  < STUDENTS[i + 1]
CASE 2: STUDENTS[i - 1]  < STUDENTS[i]  < STUDENTS[i + 1]
CASE 3: STUDENTS[i - 1]  > STUDENTS[i]  > STUDENTS[i + 1]
CASE 4: STUDENTS[i - 1]  < STUDENTS[i]  > STUDENTS[i + 1]
 
1. For case 1, the ‘i’th child will get one candy.
2. For case 2, the ‘i’th child will ge...read more
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Round duration - 75 minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

It was a coding round on Hackerrank.

Q1. Validate BST
Given a binary tree with N number of nodes, check if that input tree is BST (Binary Search Tree) or not. If yes, return true, return false otherwise.
A binary search tree (BST) is a binary t...read more
Ans. 
Keep the maximum and minimum range of values that are possible for each and every node and keep on recursively calling the same function for the children of current node, if it's not satisfying at any point, return false
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Q2. Reverse Linked List
Given a singly linked list of integers. Your task is to return the head of the reversed linked list.
For example:
The given linked list is 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4-> NULL. Then th...read more
Ans. 
Maintain three pointers next, curr, previous and at every stage make prev=curr, curr=next and next=next->next
At the end when null occurs, make curr as head and return head
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Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had 3 coding questions to be solved under 90 minutes. I found the questions to be of Easy to Medium level of difficulty and anyone who has practised enough from LeetCode or CodeStudio would be able to pass this round.

Q1. Count Ways To Reach The N-th Stairs
You have been given a number of stairs. Initially, you are at the 0th stair, and you need to reach the Nth stair. Each time you can either climb one step or two steps. Y...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

Our intuition is : How can we reach “currStep” step in taking one step or two steps:

1) We can take the one-step from (currStep-1)th step or,
2) We can take the two steps from (currStep-2)th step.

So the total number of ways to reach “currStep” will be the sum of the total number of ways to reach at (currStep-1)th and the total number of ways to reach (currStep-2)th step.

Let dp[currStep] define the total n...read more
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Q2. Water
You are given an array 'ARR' of positive integers, each of which represents the number of liters of water in that particular bucket, we have to make the liters of water in every bucket equal.
...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Sort the array(waters array) in descending order.

2) Assuming every bucket as a candidate finds the minimum amount of water needs to be removed. The result will be a minimum amount of water, among that.

3) Every bucket which is on the left of the current bucket has more water than a current bucket, and every bucket which is on the right of the current bucket has less water than an existing bucket.

4) Fo...read more
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Q3. Set Bits
Write a program to count the number of 1's in the binary representation of an integer.
Input format :
 The only line of input contains a single integer N.
Output format :
The only line of...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 
1) Here we are converting the number into binary, and during the conversion, we are checking the remainder part.
2) If it is 1, then we increment the value of count by 1.

TC : O(log(N)), where N = given integer
SC : O(1)
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

In this round, the interviewer asked me 2 coding questions in which I was expected to first explain my approach with proper complexity analysis and then code up the solution. These questions were then followed by 2 puzzles to check my overall aptitude.

Q1. Candies
Prateek is a kindergarten teacher. He wants to give some candies to the children in his class. All the children stand in a line and each of them has a grade according to his or her performance in ...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Create an array (say, ‘CANDIES’) to store candies for each student and initialise it with 1.

2) Run a loop from 1 to ‘N’ (say, iterator ‘i’), if ‘STUDENTS’[i] is less than ‘STUDENTS’[i - 1] :
Update ‘CANDIES’[i] to ‘CANDIES’[i] + ‘CANDIES’[i - 1]

3) Run a loop from ‘N’ - 2 to 0 (say, iterator ‘i’), if ‘STUDENTS’[i] is greater than ‘STUDENTS’[i + 1] and ‘CANDIES’[i] is smaller than ‘CANDIES’[i + 1] + 1:
U...read more
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Q2. Validate BST
You have been given a binary tree of integers with N number of nodes. Your task is to check if that input tree is a BST (Binary Search Tree) or not.
A binary search tree (BST) is a binary tr...read more
Ans. 
Approach (Using Inorder Traversal) : 

1) If an inorder traversal is performed on a binary search tree, then the elements are in ascending order.

2) While performing the traversal, keep track of the previous node and the current node.

3) If the previous node is greater than the current node, then the binary tree is definitely not a binary search tree.

4) For all nodes, if the previous node is smaller than the current n...read more
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Q3. Puzzle
Two wire burning puzzle.
Ans. 
If we light a stick, it takes 60 minutes to burn completely. What if we light the stick from both sides? It will take exactly
half the original time, i.e. 30 minutes to burn completely.

1) 0 minutes – Light stick 1 on both sides and stick 2 on one side.
2) 30 minutes – Stick 1 will be burnt out. Light the other end of stick 2.
3) 45 minutes – Stick 2 will be burnt out. Thus 45 minutes is completely measured.
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Q4. Puzzle
Mislabeled Jars :
There are 3 jars, namely, A, B, C. All of them are mislabeled. Following are the labels of each of the jars:

A: Candies
B: Sweets
C: Candies and Sweets (mixed in a random proportion)

You...read more
Ans. 
Answer : 1 pick of an eatable is required to correctly label the Jars.

Approach :
1) Pick only one eatable from jar C. Suppose the eatable is a candy, then the jar C contains candies only(because all
the jars were mislabeled).

2) Now, since the jar C has candies only, Jar B can contain sweets or mixture. But, jar B can contain only the mixture
because its label reads “sweets” which is wrong.

3) Therefore, Jar A contains swee...read more
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Round duration - 30 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was a Technical Cum HR round where I was first asked some basic SQL related concepts and then we discussed
about my expectations from the company , learnings and growth in the forthcomig years. I would suggest be honest and
try to communicate your thoughts properly in these type of rounds to maximise your chances of getting selected.

Q1. Basic HR Questions
Why should we hire you ?
What are your expectations from the company?
How was your overall interview experience?
What are your strengths and weakness according to you?
Where do you see yourse...read more
Ans. 
Tip 1 : The cross questioning can go intense some time, think before you speak.

Tip 2 : Be open minded and answer whatever you are thinking, in these rounds I feel it is important to have opinion.

Tip 3 : Context of questions can be switched, pay attention to the details. It is okay to ask questions in these round,
like what are the projects currently the company is investing, which team you are mentoring. How all is the ...read more
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