Purple Interviews

We're pleased to invite you to the testing stage of our Consultant roles at Telstra Purple. On this page you'll find instructions on how to complete the technical interview pre-requisites for the desired role you're looking to apply for.

Once you have completed the prescribed test, please send back your workings as instructed below. One of our consultants will then review and make a decision on whether you will progress to the next stage. Rest assured, we'll of course give you feedback either way.

If you're interested to see more roles at Telstra Purple, make sure to check out Telstra Purple Careers.

To understand more about our role levels, check out our Career Frameworks page.

A person sitting at a desk with a laptop

Interview for

Cloud
Data
Development
DevOps

Instructions for

Toy Robot

Toy Robot

Scenario

Create a library that can read in commands of the following form:

  • PLACE X, Y, DIRECTION
  • MOVE
  • LEFT
  • RIGHT
  • REPORT

Developing your Solution

  1. Use your preferred language, platform and IDE to implement this solution.
    • .NET: A console application written in C#
    • Web: A web app written in React and TypeScript
    • iOS: An interactive UI for the application written in Swift
    • Android: An interactive UI for the application written in Kotlin
  2. Your solution should be clean, easy to read, maintain and production ready. It should also be proportionally complex to address the problem.
  3. Ensure your code is robust and satisfies the test cases.
  4. Error conditions should be handled appropriately and presented in a clear way.
  5. You should provide build scripts or instructions to build and run the solution.
  6. There should be a user interface to run the solution and assess that it works correctly. This could be a command prompt interface that takes one string command in at a time.
  7. The code should be original and you may not use any external libraries or open source code to solve this problem, but you may use external libraries or tools for building or testing purposes.

Solution Requirements

  • The library allows for a simulation of a toy robot moving on a 6 x 6 square tabletop.
  • There are no obstructions on the table surface.
  • The robot is free to roam around the surface of the table, but must be prevented from falling to destruction. Any movement that would result in this must be prevented, however further valid movement commands must still be allowed.
  • PLACE will put the toy robot on the table in position X,Y and facing NORTH, SOUTH, EAST or WEST.
  • (0,0) can be considered as the SOUTH WEST corner and (5,5) as the NORTH EAST corner.
  • The first valid command to the robot is a PLACE command. After that, any sequence of commands may be issued, in any order, including another PLACE command. The library should discard all commands in the sequence until a valid PLACE command has been executed.
  • The PLACE command should be discarded if it places the robot outside of the table surface.
  • Once the robot is on the table, subsequent PLACE commands could leave out the direction and only provide the coordinates. When this happens, the robot moves to the new coordinates without changing the direction.
  • MOVE will move the toy robot one unit forward in the direction it is currently facing.
  • LEFT and RIGHT will rotate the robot 90 degrees in the specified direction without changing the position of the robot.
  • REPORT will announce the X,Y and orientation of the robot.
  • A robot that is not on the table can choose to ignore the MOVE, LEFT, RIGHT and REPORT commands.

Example Input and Output

  1. Example 1 Input
> PLACE 0,0,NORTH
> MOVE
> REPORT
Output: 0,1,NORTH
  1. Example 2 Input
> PLACE 0,0,NORTH
> LEFT
> REPORT
Output: 0,0,WEST
  1. Example 3 Input
> PLACE 1,2,EAST
> MOVE
> MOVE
> LEFT
> MOVE
> REPORT
Output: 3,3,NORTH
  1. Example 4 Input
> PLACE 1,2,EAST
> MOVE
> LEFT
> MOVE
> PLACE 3,1
> MOVE
> REPORT
Output: 3,2,NORTH

Code Complete

When the solution is code complete, share your source code and supporting artefacts (e.g. GitHub/OneDrive/Google Drive) with the Consultant/ Talent Acquisition Specialist who contacted you from Telstra Purple.