The Stream Joiner
A hard Python mock interview question on DataDriven, with an AI interviewer who asks follow-up questions and a hire or no-hire decision at the end.
- Domain
- Python
- Difficulty
- hard
- Seniority
- L5
Interview Prompt
You're correlating two time-sorted event streams where each event is a dict carrying a `timestamp` and a `value`, given a numeric `tolerance`. Walking `stream_a` in order, pair each event with the nearest event in `stream_b` within `tolerance` of it, emitting a dict of `a_value`, `b_value`, and the absolute `gap`.
Summary
Events don't wait for each other. This does.
How This Interview Works
- Read the vague prompt (just like a real interview)
- Ask clarifying questions to the AI interviewer
- Write and run your Python against test cases
- Answer the interviewer's follow-up questions, then get a hire or no-hire decision