Electronic Arts Interview Question for Software Engineer / Developers






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3
of 3 vote

Different strategies for handling random crashes are
1. Analyze the crash dump
2. Log the components (either in full or sparsely) and rerun the code.
3. Look for patterns like input type, time of crash or operations that happen while crashing etc.,

Most random crashes are timing issues. so enabling logs for all of them will not help all the times.

- Krishna September 07, 2011 | Flag Reply
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1
of 1 vote

Application can crash because of several reasons. One common reason I can think of is when program tries to access a null pointer . Another cause can be accessing memory out of bounds. Stack overflow can also cause the crash.

- Gundu April 11, 2010 | Flag Reply
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1
of 1 vote

Try to isolate where exactly the problem is. If it is good code and is modular, then you know which module or function is causing the crash.
Set breakpoints, debug each line and see which line is causing a problem. Using a debugger helps you view the contents of the memory you are accessing. Most crashes are caused by memory being written to without being allocated, buffer overflows, heap corruptions, etc.
As you pass through each line, see that whatever is being accessed is a legal operation.
There are some really tricky pitfalls though.
For example, using HeapAllocate() on Win32, and then writing past the end of the allocated memory does not throw an exception. But, when you try to HeapFree(), then the program crashes.
Hence, every line needs to be analysed carefully.

- Chris September 07, 2012 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 vote

rm -rf *

Simple.

- Anonymous January 27, 2009 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 vote

This is a stupid question.

- Anonymous January 27, 2009 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 vote

wtf.. this is not a question to ask

- chodu January 30, 2009 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 vote

If you find a random crash, that can be due to some issues with locking (synchronization) or accessing an invalid/freed memory (can again be due to synchronization).

- Gireesh April 24, 2009 | Flag Reply
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0
of 0 vote

using either the register options or gflags, attach the debugger whenever the program starts so that you get more details when it crashes

- prabhu December 14, 2009 | Flag Reply


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