Terms of use

Practice questions and short written lessons on software engineering topics, scheduled for review over time. It is a revision aid, not training, certification, or professional advice. Nothing here is a promise that you will pass an interview.

The questions and explanations are written by hand and reviewed, but this field moves and mistakes happen. Treat an explanation as a starting point for reading rather than a citable authority — which is why each answer names the concepts behind it and links out. If you find something wrong, say so and it will be fixed.

Keep control of the email address you sign in with; anyone who can read that inbox can reach your account. You are responsible for what happens under it.

Pick a display name for the leaderboard that you would be comfortable showing a colleague. Names that impersonate somebody else, or that are abusive, will be removed, and repeated abuse means the account goes.

Use it to study. Do not scrape the question bank wholesale, try to break the service for other people, or attempt to reach data that is not yours. The leaderboard is a bit of fun — the numbers come from each person's own browser, so please do not spend your time gaming a scoreboard nobody is policing.

Whetstone is free and will stay free. There is nothing to buy, no subscription, and at present no way to donate even if you wanted to.

If a donation link is ever added, this is what it will mean: voluntary, buying no features and no advantage on the leaderboard, not refundable, and covering hosting and the time spent writing questions. Choosing not to donate would change nothing about what you can use.

This is provided as it is, with no warranty. It runs on free hosting tiers and may be slow, briefly unavailable, or occasionally broken. I take backups and take your progress seriously, but you should not treat this as the only record of anything that matters to you.

Because it is free and run by one person in their own time, I am not liable for losses that follow from using it — lost progress, an interview that did not go your way, or time spent on an explanation that turned out to be wrong. Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not permit to be limited.

You can delete your account at any moment from your profile, with no confirmation email and no waiting period. The service itself could be discontinued; if that happens, anyone with an account gets reasonable notice and a chance to export their progress first.

These terms, and any dispute about them, are governed by the law of the place where Whetstone is run from, and its courts are where such a dispute would be heard. If you use Whetstone as a consumer, this does not take away the protections of the law where you live.

The questions, lessons, and the site itself remain the author's work. You are welcome to use them to study and to quote them in conversation; republishing the question bank as your own is not on.

wlcalvin3@gmail.com — see also the privacy policy.