Ask HN: What is your favourite technical interview question? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite technical interview question?

#21

Post by thetylerhayes » Thu, Oct 28, 2010, 9:37 PM UTC

DirtyAndy wrote: post #8

For windows based web development: How would you create a web page that said "Hello World"? It the answer is not start notepad (I'll accept Notepad+), type in Hello World and save it as .htm or .html and put it on a webserver then for most of the places I have done interviewing for over the years they have missed the first requirement, get it done as easily and quickly as you can. I fully appreciate that this varies…

Interesting. Even though I fully subscribe to the minimalist notion, I would have opened notepad and at least entered valid HTML:

  
  Hello page
  Hello world

Thanks for sharing that viewpoint. I never thought of it that way. (Perhaps freelancing has made me forget good habits.)

Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite technical interview question?

#22

Post by demiart » Fri, Oct 29, 2010, 1:33 AM UTC

Well... the answer to that question really depends upon what set of technologies the applicant is approaching the position with. One question, however, that seems to always tell a lot about the person being interviewed is: "You are asked to mentor a new developer, fresh out of school. What habits/best-practices, language-specific and general, have you learned through your years of working that you feel should be offered to the new hire?"

Re: Ask HN: What is your favourite technical interview question?

#23

Post by babycakes » Fri, Oct 29, 2010, 2:33 AM UTC

djb_hackernews wrote: post #12

Not my favorite, but interesting: You are given two eggs and a hundred story building. You need to tell me, using as few drops as possible, what the highest floor you can drop an egg from and it won't break.

While I appreciate the inductive nature of this problem, this problem is more likely to demonstrate that the candidate has done a Google search for interview questions (http://www.google.com/search?q=google+interview+questions) than an understanding of algorithmic theory.