Comment by bryanrasmussen
3 years ago
Ok fine, so not an in-depth definition, but someone might think you mean an in-depth definition if you don't specify the level you expect is being used (perhaps because they have encountered that situation). I mean if you ask me define a hashmap and how it works for example I might think: "aw damn, this guy wants the low level details, I bet this place sucks to work at!"
Although I would probably ask them to specify the level of detail they want before trying to comply, and then not get the job because I ask a lot of unnecessary questions or something.
I'm not sure what you even mean by an "in-depth definition." What I said is basically constitutive of a hashmap, it's place in the history of CS or whatever is not.
a not in-depth definition would be a 1 sentence definition of a hash map with probably give me an example of when you might want to use it.
an in-depth definition would be that, followed by how you implement a hash map (thus if your language of choice already has a hash map, don't use that but show us how you would implement this classic data structure), how do you avoid collisions, maybe discuss some various ways that you could implement it and what the tradeoffs are. This would be you 'understand!!' what a hashmap is, like deeply. (I hope my tone makes clear I do not advocate for this)
on edit: I think it seems you might actually be advocating for this deep definition? If so, probably you are working at relatively low level?
on edit 2: for example if you were using Python you might say a hash map is a dict, and talk about how to use dict, the in-depth definition would not allow this. Which I think is what the other posters were worried about, being asked not to use your language's implementation of the concept but go lower and show you can make the whole thing.
I don't think understanding how a hash map, an incredibly simple data structure used frequently, is all that "low level." If I really wanted low level, I would talk about having linked lists of arrays rather than a linked list of nodes so that you could benefit from fewer random lookups.
I work as an ML engineer, so very high level.
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