Isio Developer Technical Test

This test revolves around a refactoring excercise called The Gilded Rose.

It can be completed in any of the following programming languages:

• C#
• JavaScript
• PHP
• Python
• TypeScript
• Visual Basic

How to complete the test

Download the code in this repository and complete the test using your programming language of choice. For each language, there is a unit test file and an example simulation program to help get you started.

When your solution is ready, send us the link to your submission (e.g. public Github repository or similar). Don't forget to include any additional instructions on how to build or run your solution, especially if you have introduced any new frameworks.

⚠️ Please do not submit PRs with test solutions directly against this source repository! They will be rejected.

As the task is refactoring based, a solution is widley open to developer interpretation and offers the opportunity for a candidate to showcase their broader skillset.

There is no correct solution as such. Instead, you may be invited to justify your solution based on your approach and the technical design decisions you have made. You are welcome to include a new README file with your submission to assist with justification of your work.

Feel free to go above and beyond the initial requirements specification if desired. For example, you may think of an additional requirement and illustrate how your refactored code allows you to implement this efficiently.

You can spend as long as you like working on your submission, however a typical solution should take no more than 2-3 hours.

Gilded Rose Requirements Specification

Hi and welcome to team Gilded Rose. As you may already know, we are a small inn with a prime location in a prominent city ran by a friendly innkeeper. We also buy and sell only the finest goods. Unfortunately, our goods are constantly degrading in Quality as they approach their sell by date.

We have a system in place that updates our inventory for us, however its codebase is very basic and is becoming increasingly difficult for us to maintain when we want to add or update functionality.

Your task is to improve the quality of our codebase, and also add a new feature to our system so that we can begin selling a new category of items. First an introduction to our system:

• All items have a SellIn value which denotes the number of days we have to sell the items
• All items have a Quality value which denotes how valuable the item is
• At the end of each day our system lowers both values for every item

Pretty simple, right? Well this is where it gets interesting:

• Once the sell by date has passed, Quality degrades twice as fast
• The Quality of an item is never negative
• "Aged Brie" actually increases in Quality the older it gets
• The Quality of an item is never more than 40
• "Sulfuras", being a legendary item, never has to be sold or decreases in Quality
• "Backstage passes", like aged brie, increases in Quality as its SellIn value approaches;
  • Quality increases by 3 when there are 7 days or less and by 4 when there are 2 days or less but
  • Quality drops to 0 after the concert

We have recently signed a supplier of conjured items. This requires an update to our system:

• "Conjured" items degrade in Quality twice as fast as normal items

Feel free to make any changes to the UpdateQuality method and add any new code as long as everything still works correctly. However, you must NOT alter the Item class or any of its properties.

Submission Review

We are looking for candidates to successfully demonstrate the following criteria to be progressed to the stage in our application process:

1. Have shown an understanding and appreciation for the rules of the test
2. Solution compiles and/or runs on all assessor machines (using any additional and reasonable instructions provided)
3. Have successfully implemented the new feature request
4. Demonstrated a clear attempt at code refactoring
5. Demonstrated a clear understanding of software testing
6. Solution contains few or zero bugs
7. Solution does NOT contain evidence of over-reliance on AI (please refrain from doing this, we are looking to assess your own skills and potential. Submissions that show over-reliance on AI will not be progressed)
8. Solution does NOT contain signs of private, plagiarised, inappropriate or malicious material
9. Demonstrated technical capability in their submission, assessed through the following areas:
   1. Readability
   2. Maintainability
   3. Complexity
   4. Performance
   5. Any documented design decision justifications

Credits

The test source code is forked and adapted from the public original, which can be found here: https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata