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Out of curiosity, what sort of questions were on the test?
by mcantor 17y ago
Out of curiosity, what sort of questions were on the test?
- edw519 17y agoThe entire test was about a fictitious language, I forget what they named it. Every question built upon the previous. The first question was something like, "These are the definitions of variables: A string is... An integer is... A date is..." Then the question would be something like, "What can '15232' be? a. an integer b. a string c. a date d. any of the above e. a and c". Another question might be "Here are the rules of precedence... What is (1 + 2) * (3 + 4) / 3 a. 4 b. 2 c. 7 d. 12 e. Can't tell for sure." It got more and more complex, all in their own pseudocode. They covered branching, iteration, arithmetic operations, Boolean algebra, etc. Things most people here have seen a million times. Kinda like SATs for programmers.
- msluyter 17y agoThat's sorta cool idea though; much better than questions like "do you know this obscure feature X of some programming language Y, or what does some class EJBServletContainerFoobar do?"
- wooby 17y agoThe US military has a standardized test called the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) that tests not your ability to use a particular language, but to learn a new, fictitious language - much like this programming test.
- glymor 17y agosuccess in the first stage of an introductory programming course is predictable, by noting consistency in use of the mental models which students apply to a basic programming problem even before they have had any contact with programming notation http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/
- Sukotto 17y agoThat sounds cool. Is it public someplace so I can try it?
- yosho 17y agodefinitely better than having to relearn java or C++ every time they ask me to take one of these tests... which tests for your knowledge of a particular language rather than programming concepts in general. Way cool test.
- char 17y agoDoes anybody actually have links to tests or coding exercises like this? I would love to do some.
- silentbicycle 17y agoYou might like the "labs" (exercises) that come with J (http://jsoftware.com/ http://jsoftware.com/). It's a real language, albeit a very unconventional one - it's a descendant of APL.
- loganfrederick 17y agohttp://projecteuler.net/ http://projecteuler.net/
- jey 17y agohttp://acm.uva.es/problemset/ http://acm.uva.es/problemset/ http://topcoder.com http://topcoder.com http://projecteuler.com http://projecteuler.com