Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#12

Post by kalyan02 »

Majority of these questions seem to be Trivia, which can be looked up. I don't see any need to learn them. They are probably nice to know but are not helpful in objectively evaluating a developers iOS skills.

The important thing while talking to candidates is evaluating their understanding of technical concepts - like multithreading, GCD vs NSOperations, application lifecycle, properties, references, blocks, memory management, caches, sandboxing, responder chain.

Whats the point of someone knowing HealthKit or Voiceover or screen resolutions if they don't understand how atomic or nonatomic properties differ?

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#13

Post by bvanslyke »

dubcanada wrote: post #7

How does any of this prove they are a good candidate? All this proves is they can remember things. When coding all if not 99% of these questions are a 4 second Google away. And most of them are also opinions which tend to lead to bias. "Oh this user doesn't like Xcode, while I only use Xcode, so nope to him".

This was my first thought, too. "What is widget X" isn't a good question. Questions more along the lines of "When would you use widget X over widget Y" will lead to better insight about a candidate, and will show actual experience.

In the same way, for normal CS questions, "Write a hash-table implementation" is OK but I think it's better go with a question where a good solution involves using a hash-table.

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#14

Post by vrao423 »

I would add questions where answers can't be found easily by searching or on stack overflow. If the answer is found in the first search result, then I don't see the point in checking if the interviewee has memorized it.

Add questions that should lead to discussions and show general knowledge.

I would add a section for small, interesting coding challenges.

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#15

Post by martinni »

bvanslyke wrote: post #13
dubcanada wrote: post #7

How does any of this prove they are a good candidate? All this proves is they can remember things. When coding all if not 99% of these questions are a 4 second Google away. And most of them are also opinions which tend to lead to bias. "Oh this user doesn't like Xcode, while I only use Xcode, so nope to him".

This was my first thought, too. "What is widget X" isn't a good question. Questions more along the lines of "When would you use widget X over widget Y" will lead to better insight about a candidate, and will show actual experience. In the same way, for normal CS questions, "Write a hash-table implementation" is OK but I think it's better go with a question where a good solution involves using a hash-table.

Absolutely a lot of these questions were general knowledge to any techsavvy guy. I strongly recommend this book called [Cracking the coding interview] by Gayle Laakmann. It's very details and in-depth, helped me prepare for all my interviews.

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#16

Post by CameronBanga »

dubcanada wrote: post #7

How does any of this prove they are a good candidate? All this proves is they can remember things. When coding all if not 99% of these questions are a 4 second Google away. And most of them are also opinions which tend to lead to bias. "Oh this user doesn't like Xcode, while I only use Xcode, so nope to him".

Understandable that these are mostly just trivia questions, my thought was that they should be a springboard (pun intended) for senior developers/managers prepping for a hiring interview, who may be a bit unsure as to what to ask.

Any candidate who answered these in one sentence/work answers with little detail would definitely not be a strong candidate, IMO. But mostly a round up of "Here's some topics to maybe dive into and get to know an engineer better with."

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#18

Post by flyosity »

CameronBanga wrote: post #16
dubcanada wrote: post #7

How does any of this prove they are a good candidate? All this proves is they can remember things. When coding all if not 99% of these questions are a 4 second Google away. And most of them are also opinions which tend to lead to bias. "Oh this user doesn't like Xcode, while I only use Xcode, so nope to him".

Understandable that these are mostly just trivia questions, my thought was that they should be a springboard (pun intended) for senior developers/managers prepping for a hiring interview, who may be a bit unsure as to what to ask. Any candidate who answered these in one sentence/work answers with little detail would definitely not be a strong candidate, IMO. But mostly a round up of "Here's some topics to maybe dive…

What would be an in-depth, wonderful answer to the question of "What's a navigation bar?"

Re: iOS Developer/Designer Interview Questions

#19

Post by danilocampos »

I'm afraid this isn't going to produce much beyond anxiety in your candidates. This leads to the sort of interaction where I'd end the interview early, thank the interviewer for their time, and high-tail it out of there never to return.

It's a trivia quiz. And frankly, who cares if you know what iBeacons are? What's the likelihood a project requires knowledge of both iBeacons and HealthKit?

HealthKit AND HomeKit?

HomeKit AND Apple Pay?

Why ask about something as deeply specialized as Metal, a brand new 3D graphics API, when so few projects are likely even to need it—except in game dev shops?

And in what conceivable universe does someone need to know the screen resolutions of any given piece of hardware? I've been building iOS apps for six years now, and I barely remember at any given moment.

Anyone looking for great interview questions for iOS devs should instead consult Black Pixel's excellent post here:

http://blackpixel.com/blog/2013/04/interview-questions-for-i...

It talks through concepts as much as technologies, hitting the most common cases for what a developer will actually use.

Post reply on HN