Gap Software Developer Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This Round was DS and Algo round and it started with formal introduction, followed by 2 problems. We first dicussed the approach the time complexity and proper code covering all cases.

Q1. 
Minimum Cost to Buy Oranges Problem Statement
You are given a bag of capacity 'W' kg and a list 'cost' of costs for packets of oranges with different weights. Each element at the i-th position in the list...read more
Ans. 
Find the minimum cost to buy a specific weight of oranges using given cost list.
• Iterate through the cost list and find the minimum cost to achieve the desired weight

• Keep track of the minimum cost while considering available packet weights

• Return -1 if it is not possible to buy exactly W kg of oranges
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Q2. 
K - Sum Path In A Binary Tree
Given a binary tree where each node contains an integer value, and a value 'K', your task is to find all the paths in the binary tree such that the sum of the node values in ...read more
Ans. 
Find all paths in a binary tree where the sum of node values equals a given value 'K'.
• Traverse the binary tree using DFS and keep track of the current path and its sum.

• At each node, check if the current sum equals 'K' and add the path to the result if true.

• Continue traversal to the left and right child nodes recursively.

• Return the list of paths that sum up to 'K'.
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Round duration - 40 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round majorly focused on puzzles and some questions revolving around Computer Networks and the projects in my resume .

Q1. You have two wires of different lengths that take different times to burn. How can you measure a specific amount of time using these two wires?
Ans. 
Use two wires of different lengths to measure a specific amount of time by burning them simultaneously.
• Burn both wires at the same time, one wire will burn faster than the other.

• Measure the time it takes for the faster burning wire to completely burn.

• Calculate the specific amount of time by using the ratio of the lengths of the two wires.
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Q2. You have 3 ants located at the corners of a triangle. The challenge is to determine the movement pattern of the ants if they all start moving towards each other. What will be the outcome?
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Round duration - 30 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This is a cultural fitment testing round .HR was very frank and asked standard questions. Then we discussed about my role.

Q1. What do you know about the company?
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Q2. Why should we hire you?
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a proctured online coding round where we had 2 questions to solve under 90 minutes . The questions were of easy to medium level I would say with some lenghty implementations .

Q1. 
Minimum Numbers Required Problem Statement
Given an array 'ARR' consisting of N integers, along with two integers, 'SUM' and 'MAXVAL', you need to determine the minimum number of integers to be added to t...read more
Ans. 
Determine the minimum number of integers to be added to an array to make its sum equal to a given value.
• Iterate through the array and calculate the current sum.

• Determine the difference between the target sum and the current sum.

• Add the minimum number of integers within the range of -MAXVAL to MAXVAL to reach the target sum.
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Q2. 
Maximum Sum Subsequence Problem Statement
Given an array of integers NUMS consisting of N integers and an integer K, determine the maximum sum of an increasing subsequence with exactly K elements.
Exampl...read more
Ans. 
Find the maximum sum of an increasing subsequence with exactly K elements in an array of integers.
• Iterate through the array and maintain a dynamic programming table to store the maximum sum of increasing subsequences ending at each index.

• For each element, check all previous elements to find the increasing subsequence with maximum sum ending at that element.

• Update the dynamic programming table with the maximum sum found...read more
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Standard Data Structures and Algorithms round . One has to be fairly comfortable in solving algorithmic problems to
pass this round with ease.

Q1. 
Check Whether Binary Tree Is Complete
You have been given a binary tree and your task is to determine if it is a Complete Binary Tree or not.
A Complete Binary Tree is defined as a binary tree where ever...read more
Ans. 
Check if a binary tree is a Complete Binary Tree or not based on given criteria.
• Traverse the binary tree level by level and check if all levels are completely filled except the last one.

• Ensure all nodes at the last level are positioned at the leftmost side.

• Use level order traversal to check for completeness of the binary tree.

• Example: For input 1 2 3 4 -1 5 6 -1 7 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1, the output should be 1.
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Q2. 
Consecutive Elements
Given an array arr of N non-negative integers, determine whether the array consists of consecutive numbers. Return true if they do, and false otherwise.
Input:
The first line of inp...read more
Ans. 
Check if an array of integers consists of consecutive numbers.
• Iterate through the array and check if the absolute difference between consecutive elements is 1.

• Sort the array and check if the elements are consecutive.

• Use a set to store the elements and check if the size of the set is equal to the length of the array.
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Round duration - 40 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round majorly focused on my projects and some standard questions revolving around Operating Systems and DBMS.

Q1. How can you print numbers from 1 to 100 using more than two threads in an optimized approach?
Ans. 
Use multiple threads to print numbers from 1 to 100 in an optimized approach.
• Divide the range of numbers (1-100) among the threads to avoid duplication.

• Use synchronization mechanisms like mutex or semaphore to ensure proper order of printing.

• Consider using a shared data structure like a queue to coordinate the threads.

• Implement a mechanism to signal the threads when to start and stop printing.
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Q2. What are the advantages of using views in a database management system?
Ans. 
Views in a database management system provide data security, simplify complex queries, and improve performance.
• Enhanced security by restricting access to certain columns or rows

• Simplify complex queries by pre-defining joins and filters

• Reduce redundancy by storing commonly used queries as views

• Improve performance by storing pre-processed data in views

• Allow for data abstraction, making it easier to work with complex data
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Round duration - 30 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This is a cultural fitment testing round .HR was very frank and asked standard questions. Then we discussed about my role.

Q1. What do you know about the company?
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Q2. Why should we hire you?
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Q1. Basic JS & React concepts
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System design on the frontned application

Q1. Laravel based questions
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Q1. Basic questions
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2 coding questions from dsa. one quest was from trees ds

Q1. Why did you choose target
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Q2. Minus points in you that you can share with us
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Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Round duration - 60 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was the technical round, held around at 10 AM IST on Google Meet.
Firstly she greeted me and asked me to tell something about myself, to which I introduced myself, explaining my academic and some projects also.
After that we moved on to the Hackathon project, which was smart cart self-checkout system. I explained the project along with the code, wherever necessary.
Every word you say while explaining should be clear to you.I used Firebase and SQL while explaining my project, to which she asked some questions related to it, 
Then she moved to the DBMS part, types of joins,what is indexing, how to approach if you were to design a payment system.
At last she asked me some Data Structure questions, which were of medium complexity

Q1. 
Remove the Kth Node from the End of a Linked List
You are given a singly Linked List with 'N' nodes containing integer data and an integer 'K'. Your task is to delete the Kth node from the end of this Lin...read more
Ans. 
Remove the Kth node from the end of a singly linked list given the position 'K'.
• Traverse the list to find the length 'N' of the linked list.

• Calculate the position of the node to be removed from the beginning as 'N - K + 1'.

• Traverse the list again and remove the node at the calculated position.
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Q2. 
House Robber Problem Statement
Consider Mr. X, a professional robber who is planning to rob houses along a street. These houses are arranged in a circle, which means the first house is a neighbor to the l...read more
Ans. 
House Robber problem where adjacent houses have connected security system, find maximum money Mr. X can rob without triggering security.
• Use dynamic programming to keep track of maximum money robbed at each house.

• At each house, decide whether to rob the current house or skip it based on maximum money robbed so far.

• Handle the circular nature of houses by considering two cases: robbing the first house and not robbing the ...read more
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Round duration - 30 minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The interviewer was very frank and cheerful. This was held at 2:30 PM IST on Google Meet.
He firstly greeted me and asked me how I was doing.
How was my previous round, any technical difficulties?
Then he asked me to introduce myself.
He started telling about his journey to Lowe's and his technical background.
Then he asked some HR related questions

60m, Data structure and algo

Q1. Leetcode - smallest palindrome, Lowest common ancestor
Ans. 
Find the smallest palindrome and lowest common ancestor in a given tree
• To find the smallest palindrome, iterate through the string and check if it is a palindrome. Return the smallest one found.

• To find the lowest common ancestor in a tree, use a recursive approach to traverse the tree and find the common ancestor of two nodes.
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