Code Room
CodingHardcod-g444
Subject Stream processingLevel Senior–Staff~35 minCommon in Distributed systems · Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development, Technology

Question

Given a stream of integers `nums` and a window size `w`, return the list of maximums of every contiguous window of length `w` as the window slides one step at a time from left to right. If `w` is greater than len(nums), return an empty list. If `w` <= 0, also return an empty list. Solve it in O(n) using a monotonic deque rather than recomputing each window's max.

Implement
sliding_window_max(nums: list[int], w: int) → list[int]
Examples
in[[1,3,-1,-3,5,3,6,7],3]out[3,3,5,5,6,7]
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.