"I took me 2 hours to figure out how to parse the RSS feed, extract the data I need using regex (since it was all inside a single tag) and present it in a table view."
i hate to be negative or damning in anyway - you make many valid points. however what you did there is an awful performance imo. i suspect it comes from living in web circles too much. i mean... you used a regex? this is one of the rare cases where i would write a c program with old fashioned procedural logic and expect it to be done much faster and to a higher quality.
also yes, good programmers perform very well in unfamiliar environments. not having the api you want is a common real world problem - learning new apis on the fly is a vital developer skill. the idea of an unfamiliar api should neither be daunting or challenging - unless it is of exceptionally poor quality (poor naming, no docs, no samples you must reverse engineer everything - but that shouldn't stop you either).
also, i hear a lot about the value of regexes - be careful, this is a web centric view. regexes are a very limited parsing/recognition tool and outside of web development - they go unused for most such problems - they either aren't powerful enough or add a needless layer of complexity in the general case.
as a concrete example most compiler generators will use regex for lexing but not for parsing at all - even repeated regex on a tokenised one line string is nowhere near as useful or practical as ll, lalr or especially glr parsing.
they also add a layer of complexity... someone famously said something like "oh, you used a regex... now you have /two/ problems"
good luck though. given more time and practice you will learn to eat these interviews up then spit them out with you rejecting them for making a poor first impression on you as a prospective employer... interviews work both ways after all.
i hate to be negative or damning in anyway - you make many valid points. however what you did there is an awful performance imo. i suspect it comes from living in web circles too much. i mean... you used a regex? this is one of the rare cases where i would write a c program with old fashioned procedural logic and expect it to be done much faster and to a higher quality.
also yes, good programmers perform very well in unfamiliar environments. not having the api you want is a common real world problem - learning new apis on the fly is a vital developer skill. the idea of an unfamiliar api should neither be daunting or challenging - unless it is of exceptionally poor quality (poor naming, no docs, no samples you must reverse engineer everything - but that shouldn't stop you either).
also, i hear a lot about the value of regexes - be careful, this is a web centric view. regexes are a very limited parsing/recognition tool and outside of web development - they go unused for most such problems - they either aren't powerful enough or add a needless layer of complexity in the general case.
as a concrete example most compiler generators will use regex for lexing but not for parsing at all - even repeated regex on a tokenised one line string is nowhere near as useful or practical as ll, lalr or especially glr parsing.
they also add a layer of complexity... someone famously said something like "oh, you used a regex... now you have /two/ problems"
good luck though. given more time and practice you will learn to eat these interviews up then spit them out with you rejecting them for making a poor first impression on you as a prospective employer... interviews work both ways after all.