461–470 of 489 posts
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They might not care, but in that case this question essentially tests if a person understands what 'GHz' means and can think logically, which is not that much to ask.
Why would web programmer think about processors and GHz is beyond me. There are jobs where it might matter, but for most of them it is completely irrelevant.
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I agree. Most companies screw themselves with the technical interview by giving it. I give something simple like FizzBuzz and that's it. My big questions is: "What was one of your favorite projects and what did you do?" That will tell you everything I need to know. The problem with giving technical interviews is you are testing for someone who is an extrovert that can bullshit under pressure. That's not what you want…
I think you have it the other way round. Asking about favorite projects is easier for extroverts that can bullshit under pressure than technical interviews.
Do you think introverts don't like to talk and to brag?
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Why would web programmer think about processors and GHz is beyond me. There are jobs where it might matter, but for most of them it is completely irrelevant.
What's next? We shouldn't expect programmers to be aware of how characters, integers and floating point numbers work on a computer?
The rest is fluff and hidden cultural test: "Do you have the same history as I do?"
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Why would web programmer think about processors and GHz is beyond me. There are jobs where it might matter, but for most of them it is completely irrelevant.
I know we can treat a lot of the technology we use as a black box, but not knowing even the basics of that technology indicates a lack of curiosity. I'd be shocked to find a competent programmer who couldn't answer the question. A similar question: approximately how many IPv4 addresses are there? See also: "Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know"
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I have similarly asked "write a function, minimum(), that takes a list of integers and returns the smallest integer in the given list" for quite some time. It's disturbingly effective. I've always asked something that involved a loop, to ensure that candidates understood how to write a for loop. (I have a variant of the above, a "more complicated" question, that involves maintaining two pointers/iterators; that remov…
The whole for loop thing - absolutely! We used to ask people to right a function in C that converts an array of doubles from degrees to radians. It was amazing how many people had no idea and who had sailed through CV/resume screening, telephone interview, and 'technical discussion' part of the interview with ease.
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I'm not a programmer but wouldn't if (endtime[1] > starttime[2]){status=conflict} work? Assuming time is encoded in epoch format.
To find whether a and b intervals overlap (ends are not included): overlap = a.start
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I think you have it the other way round. Asking about favorite projects is easier for extroverts that can bullshit under pressure than technical interviews.
It's also much easier for introverts. They can talk about something that is not themselves and something they know very well. They can now expose many interesting and subtle details of their craft. Do you think introverts don't like to talk and to brag?
Ask an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars about Star Wars and you can easily tell the difference. (as long as you yourself aren't an extrovert bullshitter who couldn't care less about Star Wars)
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They mean 10^9 and 10^6, and that each "operation" in a complex algorithm is often something like a hash-table lookup, which may be constant time, but takes closer to 1000 clock cycles than 1.
Ahh, I got it. For whatever reason I didn't associate 109->10^9 and 106->10^6.
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The question of relevance reminds me of an anecdote. (Before that though; I tend to agree with your points.) A distant acquaintance interviewed for a secretary position. It didn't go well, because she was asked a general knowledge question (something along the lines of: "name some of the planets in the solar system"). She was furious with how irrelevant and unfair this was. It makes me wonder though, would I have hir…
One of the things I like to do is ask a factual question about a technology listed on the candidate's resume that isn't required to know in order to hack something together, but is something that "you should know" if you've been working in a particular technology for a few years. These are part of the warm-up, I'll ask one or two right at the beginning of the interview and then move to the real questions. Examples ar…
You can call `GC.Collect()` and hope. But far as I know the GC will do a best effort and gives no guarantees.
Of course that's besides that fact that I would need strong arguments to accept a `GC.Collect()` anywhere in the code. But to call it just to ensure an object is collected? Oh boy..
Depending on the case you could add some code to the `Dispose(bool)` method to know when your object is collected, but also in that case you risk flipping a Bozo bit.
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I think the best part of this is how many people are getting it wrong in the comments here or not fully thinking it through. Perhaps it's not as easy a question as you think it is in the heat of the moment during a stressful interview?
Sounds like an effective filter to me. Where I work, this would be the first part of one of the interviews, with the second part being something more like "Given a list of calendar appointments, what is the maximum number which can be attended without conflicts?"
(assuming the list happens on the same day)?