Logs & Server Data

A lot of IBM's HackerRank prompts are business stories about data a system already produced. Machines write status lines into a log. A monitoring job compares each host's load against the fleet average. A movie service returns its catalog ten records per page, and you have to read every page to answer. Under each story is a small calculation, such as a streak per key, a sum and a comparison, or a running max across pages.

What makes these hard is reading the data correctly. Log entries from different servers are interleaved. A load check done with integer division flags a host that sits just under the threshold. A rating sent as the string "10.0" sorts below "9.5". None of these needs a new algorithm, but each one needs the parsing and the arithmetic exactly right, and IBM's grader checks every submission for that.

The IBM angle

The paged-API problem isn't on LeetCode lists. It has come up in IBM's assessment for AI developer and AI backend engineer roles, and it reads nothing like a textbook problem. You fetch page 1, learn from it how many pages exist, and only then loop. The editor locks the code around your function, so a request that throws has to be caught inside it. Practice it once against stand-in pages so the real prompt doesn't surprise you.

IBMPremium lesson · Coding round

The 3 IBM problems are below.

1. 1A Premium questionCoding · Medium · Frequently asked
2. 2A Premium questionCoding · Medium
3. 3A Premium questionCoding · Easy

Each with hints, the follow-up and a tested solution.

Get the IBM questions

$49 a year · all 100 companies · cancel anytime

From 328 IBM reports, forum threads behind logins and write-ups in Chinese.

Read a free IBM lesson firstAlready a member? Sign in