1. I'd omit the special cases since they're not necessary for correctness. (Unless I had benchmarks and a performance critical application, but interview questions aren't that.) 2. parseInt everywhere mixes up parsing and algorithm logic, which is a recipe for bugs in my experience. You could convert once, in makeDict. 3. Speaking of ++, I don't like the new version because it looks like it increments dict[num] followed by a redundant self assignment, and to C programmers, it looks like undefined behavior. You could post on codereview.stackexchange.com for more opinions. — David Eisenstat 5 secs ago

I don't think there's a straightforward way to do this, but it's a good question. I think this question would do better over at Software Engineering, where they specialize more in these sorts of architecture questions. — Ryan M 36 secs ago

Open letter to students with homework problems and How to ask homework questions: Make a genuine attempt yourself, show your code, ask a specific question. — kaylum 14 secs ago

This is too long and you claim you have written a "template" (whatever that is supposed to be), but there is nothing. Also read this: How to Ask. For the moment this question is just a homework dump. Also read this: softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6166/… — Jabberwocky 14 secs ago

Welcome to stack overflow. We're all programmers here. We may have a hard time tackling your question. You may want to try your luck here: security.stackexchange.com — Marek Puchalski 35 secs ago