My React Native Interview Experience

Yesterday, I had an interview for a React Native Developer role. Although I don’t have much experience with React Native, I still gave my best effort.

The interview started with some basic questions about me, followed by a discussion on React fundamentals, including hooks, state management, and the DOM. After covering these topics, the interviewer moved on to review my assignment application. I explained the core functionality of the assignment and highlighted the extra features I added on my own.

Next, we examined the code, and I did my best to explain it, leveraging my prior knowledge of React and Android development. Before the interview, I had also watched some tutorials and read articles about React Native, which helped me a lot in articulating my thoughts.

To test my coding skills, the interviewer gave me a task: implement pagination. I successfully completed it, ensuring that new data was loaded as the user scrolled.

Then came a more challenging problem. The interviewer asked me to:

1. Fetch the first 10 data items.

2. On scroll, fetch 10 more items.

3. Check if there were any duplicate entries in the newly combined 20 items.

4. Remove any duplicates before displaying the data.

I tried my best to solve the problem but, unfortunately, couldn’t get it fully working.

Solution 

const firstFetch = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
const secondFetch = [8, 4, 6, 5, 7];

let mergedArray = [...firstFetch , ...secondFetch];

const output = mergedArray.filter((item, index) => mergedArray.indexOf(item) === index);

console.log(output); 

As the interview wrapped up, the interviewer shared valuable insights on how senior developers approach problems. They emphasized the importance of memory management, suggesting that before creating any variable or state, one should think carefully about whether it’s necessary. The ability to optimize performance and manage resources efficiently is what differentiates a senior developer.

Overall, I found this interview to be a great learning experience. Despite not having prior React Native experience, I was able to demonstrate my problem-solving skills and adaptability. The challenge I struggled with was tricky, but it gave me a clear idea of the level of thinking expected in real-world development.