/loamstream-hiring-java

Primary LanguageJava

LoamStream Hiring Exercise

Thanks for taking the time to do this exercise. There are several ways to do it, all with different tradeoffs. We've tried to make it fair - no trick questions or brain teasers - but feedback is welcome.

Instructions

  • Download or clone this repo.
  • Implement org.broadinstitute.hiring.Planner.Default.findButtonPresses such that all the unit tests pass.
  • Zip up your code and send it to us.

Details

Suppose you want to watch a movie at home, via some Netflix-like service displayed on a screen in your living room. You don't interact with this service using a keyboard and mouse, but rather with a remote control that has (for our purposes) five buttons: up, down, left, right, and select. The directional buttons move a cursor around on an on-screen virtual keyboard. The select button "types" the key the cursor is on. There's a search UI, where you "type" in strings using the on-screen keyboard and search the movie library for films that match.

Your task is to implement the Planner.Default.findButtonPresses method to help you type things in. Given a representation of a keyboard and a string you'd like to type, this method should find the button presses needed to enter in the characters in the string. For example, suppose you'd want to spell cat on a keyboard that looks like this:

q w e r t y u i o p
a s d f g h j k l
z x c v b n m

Assuming the cursor starts on q, one solution is

[down, down, right, right, select,       //c
 up, left, left, select,                 //a
 up, right, right, right, right, select] //t

Note that there are many, many paths the cursor could take between any two keys. (It could meander indefinitely, for example.) There are also lots of equivalent or symmetrical paths: right, down and down, right, etc. We're not looking for the shortest or "best" sequences of button presses, just ones that are valid.

Notes

  • Though it's not required, you'll find it helpful to run the tests with Maven. Maven can be downloaded here https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi , though instructions for installing and running Maven are beyond the scope of this README.
  • To run the tests, run mvn test from the directory you cloned or downloaded.