I started with the obvious classes: Room, Booking, User, BookingService.
Start by clarifying requirements and constraints, then design a clean object model with core entities like Room, Booking, and User. Focus on the booking and availability logic, using interval trees or sorted lists for efficient conflict detection, and handle time zones by storing all times in UTC. Discuss trade-offs and scalability, and provide a class diagram and code for the core logic.
Pro tip: Demonstrate awareness of real-world complexities like recurring bookings with exceptions and time zone conversions, and propose a strategy for conflict resolution (e.g., first-come-first-served or priority-based).
Ask questions to understand expected scale, booking rules, recurrence patterns, time zone support, and conflict resolution policies. Define functional and non-functional requirements.
Identify core classes (Room, Booking, User, RecurrenceRule, etc.) and their relationships. Include attributes and methods, and consider using design patterns like Strategy for conflict resolution.
Write code for creating a booking, checking availability, and rejecting overlaps. Use efficient data structures (e.g., interval tree) for conflict detection.
Design recurrence rules (e.g., RRULE) and generate instances. Store all times in UTC and convert to local time zones for display and input.
Explain how conflicts are resolved (e.g., priority, first-come-first-served) and trade-offs between simplicity and scalability, consistency and availability.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.