Related Coding / DSA
Longest Strictly Increasing Subsequence
Given a sequence of integers, find the length of the longest subsequence (not necessarily contiguous) whose elements are strictly increasing.
1. Problem Statement
Given a non-empty list of integers, find the maximum sum of any contiguous non-empty subarray. The list has at most 100000 elements, and each value is between -10000 and 10000 inclusive. Start with any clarifying questions.
2. Live Coding Format
Work in the provided coding workspace while explaining your decisions to the live interviewer. Validation may use inline tests, examples, comments, or a verbal walkthrough.
3. Key Focus Areas
- 1Contract clarification (non-empty input, non-empty subarray, all-negative)
- 2Linear-scan approach and invariant
- 3Implementation correctness
- 4Follow-up: index tracking
- 5Streaming discussion
4. What Strong Candidates Should Demonstrate
- ✓Clarify the contract: must the subarray be non-empty, and how are all-negative inputs handled?
- ✓Explain the linear-scan (Kadane's) approach before coding and identify why it is O(n).
- ✓Implement correctly, tracking the current running sum and the best seen so far.
- ✓Follow up: return the start and end indices of the maximum subarray, not just the sum.
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Practice this problem in the live coding workspace while the interviewer probes your clarification, implementation, trade-offs, and validation.
Continue to DashboardCore Concepts
Dynamic ProgrammingArraysKadane's Algorithm
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