There are no Performance-Aware Programming lessons this week because it is Summer Internship 1994 Week here on Computer, Enhance! This week will feature five posts about the programming questions I was asked when I interviewed for a Microsoft summer internship way, way back in 1994. Normally scheduled lessons will resume next week.

Long, long, long ago — I believe it was in 1994, but it could have been 1993 — I had to interview at Microsoft for a summer intern position. I interviewed with four separate people, and each one asked me a classic Microsoft interview “programming question”.

Of course, there wasn’t much of an internet back then, so I had no idea that was going to happen. I had no idea what a classic Microsoft programming question even was, or that they would be asking me them in the interviews.

What’s more, being young and inexperienced at the time, I had actually never had anyone ask me to solve a programming question on the spot before.…