Abridge New Grad Software Engineer Interview Experience — Three Python Tasks and an Update-Order Follow-up

My CoderPad assessment had three Python problems, which I found fairly basic. One counted word frequencies and returned counts in alphabetical word order. Another enumerated possible parental genetic combinations from blood types. The third simulated wind moving leaves around a grid, with leaves disappearing beyond the boundary.

After the coding tasks, a written follow-up asked why each movement used a new grid and what could go wrong with updating the existing grid directly. My main cautions were to sort outputs as required, handle boundaries, and make each movement happen simultaneously across cells.