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Hi All:
I'm just starting out in my software development career (making a lateral move from systems analyst to developer) and I was wondering if anyone has compiled a cheat sheet of the most common tech interview questions that can be asked. I know two already: "What is the difference between polymorphism and overloading?" and "What is the difference between a value type and a reference type?". And I know there are a HOST of others (I've looked at a number of tech interview sites), but what are the ones that you've found come up over and over again?
Dre---
=======================
Every experience in life is a lesson to be learned
A. Stevens
B.S., Computer Science
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I don't keep a list of question they ask me. I keep a list of questions I ask them.
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1 Do you use source control?
1a Is your SC system something other than VSS?
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If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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And if it is VSS, is it backed up every 2 hours??  Why not?? 
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote: And if it is VSS, is it backed up every 2 hours?? Why not??
I thought the if vss used branch was to either ask to leave, or start asking mess with them type questions for your personal amusement.
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If you view money as inherently evil, I view it as my duty to assist in making you more virtuous.
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Oh, sorry, this part of the questionaire IS for personal amusement! 
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Dave Kreskowiak wrote: I don't keep a list of question they ask me. I keep a list of questions I ask them.
Good, wise one
"Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon
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Having a list of answers memorized is a complete waste of time. Memorised answers don't give you the depth or breadth of knowledge that you need to pass an interview. The problem is, as soon as you are probed in any depth, glaring omissions become apparent. You really need to know the subject, and be confident in it. That way you aren't going to get any nasty surprises when somebody asks you "if I want to do A, what should I be considering?"
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Pete O`Hanlon wrote: Having a list of answers memorized is a complete waste of time.
True. It just makes you a book-worm kind of; to 'mug up' and 'vomit' the contents. 
Pete O`Hanlon wrote: You really need to know the subject, and be confident in it.
Definitely true. You get a '5' vote for that.
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DRAYKKO wrote: I was wondering if anyone has compiled a cheat sheet of the most common tech interview questions that can be asked
Don't cheat. Any technically competent interviewer will realise it and if they don't they'll figure it out once they hire you and you don't want to get fired from a job - it doesn't look good.
DRAYKKO wrote: And I know there are a HOST of others (I've looked at a number of tech interview sites), but what are the ones that you've found come up over and over again?
The ones that come up over and over again are the subjects in my CV.
A good interviewer will ask questions that require you to ANALYSE something. The majority of the job of a developer is analysis. If you can't do that then you shouldn't be doing the job. You cannot create a cheat sheet for analysis questions.
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Hi
I've a masters degree in computer application.I would like to become a database administrator. What should I learn?
and what is the current job market
please advice me
Thanks & Regards
BMP
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BMP1980 wrote: What should I learn?
Databases? I'm not sure what you mean by your question.
BMP1980 wrote: what is the current job market
Depends where you are in the world. There is a shortage of good DBAs in Scotland at the moment according to the people I met at my local SQL Server UG earlier this evening. That means companies are paying lots of money to DBAs.
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There are some certificates according to databases.
If the question is what system you should learn?
Then I think there are two solutions:
Either go for a oracle DB which is a create one! But it costs! So it is just in use from some companies, who have two much money
Or you should have a try on the MySql. It is free and well documented. It is not as good as the oracle but normally it is more than ok.
Cheers
You have the thought that modern physics just relay on assumptions, that somehow depends on a smile of a cat, which isn’t there.( Albert Einstein)
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Fatbuddha 1 wrote: There are some certificates according to databases.
If the question is what system you should learn?
Then I think there are two solutions:
Either go for a oracle DB which is a create one! But it costs! So it is just in use from some companies, who have two much money
Or you should have a try on the MySql. It is free and well documented. It is not as good as the oracle but normally it is more than ok.
I disagree.
SQL Server has recently overtaken Oracle for enterprise database systems. It would therefore seem to be prudent to learn the system that is gaining ground and needs more DBAs than the system that is losing ground.
SQL Server also comes in many flavours. SQL Server Express is free. It is well documented and there are several user groups where support from ones peers is available. If you want to learn the enterprise level features then the Developer Edition costs just $49 which is identical to the Enterprise edition but for two things. First it can also run on Windows XP or Vista (Enterprise Edition cannot) and second the licence only permits use for development and testing. Naturally, when putting those skills to use in a comercial environment the final deployed solution would be on a full license.
Finally, the OP asked the question on a Microsoft centric website. That suggests that the OP is self-selecting a choice to just what Microsoft offer. That is Access or the plethora of SQL Server Editions.
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I've just been employed (about three months ago) by a large corp, as a .NET senior dev, after working my way through a few standard dev jobs over the last few years. They are interviewing a couple of contractors next week to come in and supplement the team here. My department head just came down to my desk, and told me all this (which I had heard on the grapevine) and all of a sudden asked me to sit in on the interviews next week to query these guys on their technical knowledge of .NET. As this is the first time I've been involved in the interview process from this end, I was wondering if any of you old hands out there on CP have some standard tacks you would take on this? I have the weekend to think about it and come up with a gameplan.
Off the top of my head I'm thinking;
a) Quiz them on their understanding of the concepts of OO, and their general development methodology. Soften them up with some "concept" questions, to get a feel for how they think about the development process and how well developed their personal standards are. Perhaps some simple written tests on an algorithmic basis, using Java/C# as the syntactic base, to test their general debugging abilities.
b) Explore their knowledge of the namespaces in .NET, and their familiarity with the platform in general. Here, I'm wondering what to focus on - which areas would you consider vital to be expert in, and which might catch out an indifferent dev?
c) A couple of very specific questions to explore their knowledge of threading, web services, and SQL.
Does this sound over-the-top, or on the other hand too "vanilla"?
And also, just on the subject of coming up with specific allgorithmic tests, does anyone know of any resources on the Net which would contain some samples I could use or adapt? Or if anyone has specific tests they favour of their own, I'd welcome the input...
All the dude ever wanted... was his rug back.
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melchizidech wrote: As this is the first time I've been involved in the interview process from this end, I was wondering if any of you old hands out there on CP have some standard tacks you would take on this?
What we do[^] - From my blog.
The important thing is to discuss their CV. Don't go in with a standard set of questions that must all match up. If they don't have exactly what you are looking for they'll be able to pick it up fairly quickly if they have the basics all sorted out.
melchizidech wrote: Quiz them on their understanding of the concepts of OO, and their general development methodology
Excellent idea.
melchizidech wrote: Explore their knowledge of the namespaces in .NET, and their familiarity with the platform in general. Here, I'm wondering what to focus on - which areas would you consider vital to be expert in, and which might catch out an indifferent dev?
Just cover the basics here + what ever is on their CV. If they know ASP.NET really well then you start asking them lots about Windows Forms developement just isn't going give good results.
In other words. Things along the lines of how string works (e.g. it is immutable) and when to use StringBuilder.
melchizidech wrote: A couple of very specific questions to explore their knowledge of threading, web services, and SQL
If this is relevant then go for it. If it is a MUST HAVE requirement of the job because they are doing highly multi-threaded database backed web services then absolutely.
I was once in an interview where I was invited in and they asked me a load of questions about stuff that wasn't on my CV. e.g. Have you worked with X? And I just had to answer no to all these questions. They then terminated the interview. I'm still wondering why they invited me to interview. It doesn't give me a very good impression of their company.
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Greetings! I am sure many of you will read this and sigh, because this is the same question that I have seen a dozen times on here. I am going to approach this in a hopefully different way, so my simple question may be a bit longer than usual, but the core of it is "what do I do from here"?
I have been on and off reading/lab programming for a while now (boardering on a year). It wasn't until a few months ago that I became a lot more serious about my intent to participate. I've started tackling the OOP understanding barrier, studying and testing ideas pretty much every night of the week. I have a non-tech degree (management) and I am a little older than the average programmer new to the field (30). I feel like my knowledge is progressing well, but I am still not quite ready yet. My language of choice is C# based on the recommendation of a good friend who is a senior programmer and a named company (I know the community is tightly tied together, so I would rather not say where). Needless to say, my best freind has become my mentor. We work on my code and dress it up so that I understand how my code can be better prepared. I feel like I will still need a year to learn up to a comprable level at the casual study rate. However, now that I am seeing a sort of path, I have found that I am programming more and more, and willingly stepping outside of the boundaries of what I know to see if I can just build random items.
Here is what I know at the moment:
Basic class structures, loops, arrays, and I am working on base classes in C#. This gives me the ability (tied with the VS developer) to create very simple but functional programs. I will begin to work on SQL and ADO shortly (probably another month). However, I want to really start stepping up. I think that I want to go into applications development based on the following facts: web development has a home in PHP and Javascript as well, and I am not really ready for that sort of versatility just yet. I realized that I need to keep focused on the .Net group of languages for a while. In order, I intend to expand my C# development skills much further and this is my primary goal, following with SQL(T-SQL), ADO, and then ASP in their respective .Net form. So basically I am a semi-functional beginner.
But here is where I was hoping that some people could give me ideas, part of the challenge that I have discovered is that as a beginning programmer I am now stuck in a middle place. I am a little more advanced than the basic stuff like loops, so the beginning classes are not good for me, and the advanced classes are still just out of my range. I want to get out there and code! Play QA or something to get some real time in and start developing.
From what I understand most of the people that graduate college have little more than a theoretical understanding of programming concepts, although I am sure there are many of you out there that popped out of the womb as pros, so please don't take that as an insult. I'm a very rapid learner, and don't have to ask twice. If any of you have any sources where I can start to develop additional applications, I would appreciate it. My ideas are simply not complex enough to challenge me anymore (you can't create something greater than yourself, is the way it was told to me), and honestly my friend has better things to do with his life than always answer my questions or design more stuff for me to do.
I have heard a few suggestions about elance and things like that, but when I search there, they want pros like you guys (as I would too), and they are not really there except to get a job done (the point of outsourcing).
So again, any thoughts that you have for me, good or bad, are accepted and appreciated. I just want to get out there and get a job in the end, and at this point the only way to do that is to churn out more code.
Thanks again for your help
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.
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How refreshing this post was. Coherent. Well thought out and to the point. More importantly, you laid out your skill levels well and indicated the areas where you want to progress. So how can you go about this? Well, probably the best way to do this is to go out and code. I know that this seems to be obvious, but it's surprising how few people actually think it through.
Obviously, CP has so many good articles on coding that you should be downloading and playing with some of the samples. I'm going to make a really suggestion here - find a project that hasn't been touched in a while (preferably a .NET 1 article) and bring it up to date in .NET 2. Pick a project that is reasonably well written, but looks to have been left on the shelf for a year or so. What you get here is a base to start from, and you can bring your own programming personality to bear on it.
If you have problems, then feel free to post questions on the forums and we will do our best to help out with this.
Now - you need to learn about things like patterns. Pick up a couple of good tutorials on patterns and see if you can redo the work using patterns. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find at least a couple of patterns that you could use.
If you need help on choosing a project, pick a couple that you think that you might want to take a look at and post the links. We'll take a look and say if we think that the skill level is too great.
Good luck - and I hope we see more of you.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Will do! Thank you very much!
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.
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I would like to report that it is going much better than it was at the time I wrote this a few months ago.
But I am finding that there is still a very strong opportunity to bit off more than I can chew, as I have done with my last project (an app for work that I am doing on my own time).
I don't care what anyone says, I can see the value of classes that walk you in a structured process, and you get the opportunity to learn MVCs, and controller classes, and frickin design concepts for interfaces and databases.
Right now I feel like my right hand is furiously working to make my click events happen in this program and my left hand is punching me in the face for thinking that this was going to be a quick transition (if not an easy one).
Much respect to those of you out there. Learning this so far has taught me that it's not just syntax. It's designing the look, and creating the framework, and syntax, and after all that testing, and retesting, and staring at the screen going "...hmmm, I wonder why it's doing that?"
Oh well, at least I am getting better about asking more specific questions and being more clear as to what I need to make my programs work.
Not that that is worth more than a poop in the hand right now. 
Beginning Programmer - Still learning as much as possible.
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Hi guys
Is there any way by which we can modify BMP file metadata to add comments to the file , i.e set the properties in the image file .
Please suggest some solution to this .
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So how is this a Work and Training Issue??? You might want to ask this in the Graphics forum.
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Damn. I missed that one.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Hello,
I have code like
window.open(strurl, strwinName)
where strWinName's value is coming from database.
User can enter value like [ABC]0001, ABC^001, if these value is assigning to strWinName then in Internet explorer getting error like 'Invalid arguments', but this works fine in firefox.
Here problem in windows name, if we have any special characters like [,] or ^ then it is throwing error, How can I escape these characters any work around is appreciated.
Thanks & Regards,
Kumar
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