Microsoft Corporation Software Engineer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Learning programming languages is important for software engineers to effectively communicate with computers and develop software solutions.

• Programming languages are the foundation of software development.

• Learning multiple languages expands the range of problems a software engineer can solve.

• Different languages have different strengths and are suited for different tasks.

• Knowing multiple languages improves adaptability ...read more

To test if every left child's value is less than the right child's value in a binary tree.

• Traverse the binary tree using any traversal algorithm (e.g., in-order, pre-order, post-order)

• Compare the value of each left child with its right child

• If any left child's value is greater than or equal to its right child's value, return false

• If all left child's values are less than their right child's values, return true

Cloning a linked list-like structure

• Create a new node for each node in the original linked list

• Set the value of the new node to the value of the corresponding node in the original linked list

• Set the next pointer of the new node to the new node corresponding to the next node in the original linked list

• Repeat the above steps until all nodes in the original linked list are cloned

To find the nth character in a stream of bytes, we need to read the stream byte by byte until we reach the nth position.

• Start reading the stream byte by byte until you reach the nth position

• Return the byte at the nth position

• If the stream ends before reaching the nth position, return null or throw an exception

Rearrange a string to avoid consecutive same characters.

• Iterate through the string and keep track of the previous character.

• If the current character is the same as the previous, swap it with the next different character.

• Repeat until no consecutive same characters are left.

The task is to find the next highest palindrome number given a number.

• Convert the given number to a string

• Check if the number is already a palindrome

• If not, increment the number by 1 and check if it is a palindrome

• Repeat the previous step until a palindrome is found

Canonicalizing a directory path involves simplifying and standardizing the path to remove any redundant or unnecessary elements.

• Remove any consecutive slashes and replace them with a single slash

• Remove any trailing slashes

• Resolve any relative paths (e.g., '..' and '.')

• Handle special cases like the root directory ('/')

• Normalize the path by removing any unnecessary elements