These questions are used to assess a candidate's level of comfort with programming and some computer science topics. If a candidate is unable to complete all the questions, this does not mean they have failed to qualify for the advanced DevOps program. This will be decided in an interview. Candidates should be able to talk about the decisions they've made when solving these problems. It is strongly preferred that these solutions are provided in Python, as it is the most popular DevOps language and is the language that the pytests are written in. However, if a candidate would like to recreate the test in another language and can explain their solution to the interviewer, this is acceptable. Ideally, 'pytest questionN.py' will be run in terminal after submission and all tests will pass.

Please fork this repository before starting the questions. Please return this assignment by the end of the day. Please see the test cases for more examples of input to output mappings for each question.

1. (Warm-up) Write a function that selects the maximum value from an array of integers. Do not use any built-in max functions. select_max([1, 2, 3, 4]) -> 4

2. (Medium) Write a function that takes an array of integers and places the zeroes in the center of the array. All non-zero integers should keep their relative position. For the purpose of this question, center is defined as floor(length of array / 2). center_zeros([1, 1, 3, 0, 6, 0]) -> [1, 1, 0, 0, 3, 6]

3. (Challenging) Students have been assigned a series of math problems that have points associated with them. Given a sorted points array, minimize the number of problems a student needs to solve based on the criteria below:

    a. They must always solve the first problem, index i = 0
    
    b. After solving the i-th problem, they have a choice: solve the next problem (i + 1) or skip ahead and work the (i + 2)
     problem.
    
    c. Students must keep solving problems until the difference between the maximum points and the minimum points questions
     solved so far meets or exceeds a specified threshold
    
    d. If a student cannot meet or exceed the threshold, they must work through all the problems. 
    
    Return the minimum number of problems a student needs to solve. 
    
    minimum_points(2, [1, 2, 3]) -> 2
    Explanation: if a student solves points[0] = 1, points[2] = 3, the difference between the minimum and the maximum points
     solved is 3 - 1 = 2. This meets the threshold, so the student must solve at least 2 problems. Return 2. 
    
    minimum_points(4, [1, 2, 3, 5, 8]) -> 3
    If the threshold is 4, again it takes 3 problems solving problems 1, 3 and 4 where points[3] - points[0] = 5 - 1 = 1.
     This meets the threshold, so the student must solve at least 3 problems. Return 3
   

4. Docker installation

Install Docker and download the image jcdemo/flaskapp. Run the container in detached mode and expose port 5000. Visit port 5000 on your local computer. Put the output in a new text file and add it to this Github directory.

Good luck!