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Could you provide a few example questions you would do? Just curious what medium difficulty questions look like to you.

by ssully 8y ago

gumby 8y ago
"What do you think are the top strengths and top weaknesses of <language X>?" Doesn't matter what the specific answers are, much less if you even like language X or not. Instead it says: does the person really have an understanding of the language; do they have enough experience to say "well I really do like X, but I do often wish it had feature y of language Z". or "yes, I have a lot of JS experience since that's the job and I sure know how to sling it, but I far prefer Lisp which I found made me more productive than any other. Why? Well because at XXX I was able to do YYY...."
- aspaceman 8y ago
  This is one of the best questions to ask imo. It's very free-form and honest, and gives you the potential to dive into things technically. Do you like C or C++ better? Oh you don't like pointers? How do you avoid them in C++? etc.
tootie 8y ago
By medium I just mean, stuff beyond CS 101. So for Java, I'd ask about standard lib or basic language-specific features or tools. What's the difference between a List, Set and Map? What does the final keyword do? What does it mean for a class to be thread safe? What do you use for dependency management? What's the difference between a checked and unchecked exception? For JavaScript I can ask about let vs const? What are arrow functions good for? Maybe specific framework stuff if they say they know react. For general web stuff, I can ask about response codes. What's the difference between 400 and 500 level? What's a CDN for? What is HTTPS? You can ask basics about version control or CI. Sometimes I'll do process questions about agile. I try to stick to what they claim on their resume (and what I know about) and can tell pretty quickly if they are actually what they say they are based on how quickly, confidently and succinctly they answer.
Itaxpica 8y ago
Not the OP, but for iOS developers I've asked: "What's one thing you would change about Objective-C (this was pre-Swift), and what's one thing you would change about Cocoa [the framework that iOS apps are developed with]?" It's the kind of question that there are a lot of good answers to, any experienced iOS developer will be able to answer off-the-cuff, and it gives a good sense of the kind of work that they've done and how (plus it gets across if they know the difference between a language and a framework, which is useful).

Could you provide a few example questions you would do? Just curious what medium difficulty questions look like to you.

by ssully 8y ago

Could you provide a few example questions you would do? Just curious what medium difficulty questions look like to you.

"What do you think are the top strengths and top weaknesses of <language X>?" Doesn't matter what the specific answers are, much less if you even like language X or not. Instead it says: does the person really have an understanding of the language; do they have enough experience to say "well I really do like X, but I do often wish it had feature y of language Z". or "yes, I have a lot of JS experience since that's the job and I sure know how to sling it, but I far prefer Lisp which I found made me more productive than any other. Why? Well because at XXX I was able to do YYY...."

aspaceman 8y ago
This is one of the best questions to ask imo. It's very free-form and honest, and gives you the potential to dive into things technically. Do you like C or C++ better? Oh you don't like pointers? How do you avoid them in C++? etc.

tootie 8y ago

By medium I just mean, stuff beyond CS 101. So for Java, I'd ask about standard lib or basic language-specific features or tools. What's the difference between a List, Set and Map? What does the final keyword do? What does it mean for a class to be thread safe? What do you use for dependency management? What's the difference between a checked and unchecked exception? For JavaScript I can ask about let vs const? What are arrow functions good for? Maybe specific framework stuff if they say they know react. For general web stuff, I can ask about response codes. What's the difference between 400 and 500 level? What's a CDN for? What is HTTPS? You can ask basics about version control or CI. Sometimes I'll do process questions about agile. I try to stick to what they claim on their resume (and what I know about) and can tell pretty quickly if they are actually what they say they are based on how quickly, confidently and succinctly they answer.

Itaxpica 8y ago

Not the OP, but for iOS developers I've asked: "What's one thing you would change about Objective-C (this was pre-Swift), and what's one thing you would change about Cocoa [the framework that iOS apps are developed with]?" It's the kind of question that there are a lot of good answers to, any experienced iOS developer will be able to answer off-the-cuff, and it gives a good sense of the kind of work that they've done and how (plus it gets across if they know the difference between a language and a framework, which is useful).