Shopify Interviews · 2

First round was a pair programming question where I was asked to navigate a robot around a room.

Question:

You’ve got a Roomba in a room laid out as a grid. Each cell is either empty or blocked. The roomba can move forward, turn left, or turn right, but if it encounters a blocked cell it’ll bump into it and stay put. The goal is to get the robot to clean every accessible cell in the grid using only these movements.

// rotates/turns by 90 degrees
def turn_left()
def turn_right()

// cleans the current cell
def clean()

// moves the roomba forward
def move()

room = [
  [1, 1, 1, 1], # Row 0
  [1, 0, 0, 1], # Row 1
  [1, 1, 1, 1], # Row 2
  [1, 0, 1, 1]  # Row 3
]

# 1: Accessible cell
# 0: Blocked cell

# starting position of the Roomba
row = 2
col = 2

Had a life interview with the recruiter where we discussed my background, the reasons I chose this field, and my past experiences.

Had a CoderPad challenge over a zoom call. Was asked to implement Vim operations like replace, move cursor, undo, redo, etc. The second part involved explaining and implementing efficient file reading instead of loading the whole file into memory.

CoderPad challenge over a zoom call. Was asked to implement a robot that can move in a given direction.