New Interview Questions for Senior Software Engineers

UPDATE: I think we all agree (or at least we should) that if you go into an interview tomorrow and you look across the table and the interviewer has simply printed out this list and is reading from it, that you should excuse yourself and run. This isn't a "guide to how to interview" nor is this meant to me a "best practices for engineers" list. It's simply a collective brain-dump of stuff that someone who's been in the business of developing software for money for 10 or so years should have some passing familiarity with. Of course, it's assumed that the interviewer is able to detect BS. This isn't, and shouldn't be, a trivia contest. If you're going to get a job (or you're looking for hire someone for a job) it's ultimately more important to understand if someone can Solve Problems and if Their Head is Screwed on Straight. Take it with a grain of salt, friends, remember, you found it on the Internet. - @shanselman

Here's what I have so far.

• What is something substantive that you've done to improve as a developer in your career?
• Would you call yourself a craftsman (craftsperson) and what does that word mean to you?
• Implement a <basic data structure> using <some language> on <paper|whiteboard|notepad>.
• What is SOLID?
• Why is the Single Responsibility Principle important?
• What is Inversion of Control? How does that relate to dependency injection?
• How does a 3 tier application differ from a 2 tier one?
• Why are interfaces important?
• What is the Repository pattern? The Factory Pattern? Why are patterns important?
• What are some examples of anti-patterns?
• Who are the Gang of Four? Why should you care?
• How do the MVP, MVC, and MVVM patterns relate? When are they appropriate?
• Explain the concept of Separation of Concerns and it's pros and cons.
• Name three primary attributes of object-oriented design. Describe what they mean and why they're important.
• Describe a pattern that is NOT the Factory Pattern? How is it used and when?
• You have just been put in charge of a legacy code project with maintainability problems. What kind of things would you look to improve to get the project on a stable footing?
• Show me a portfolio of all the applications you worked on, and tell me how you contributed to design them.
• What are some alternate ways to store data other than a relational database? Why would you do that, and what are the trade-offs?
• Explain the concept of convention over configuration, and talk about an example of convention over configuration you have seen in the wild.
• Explain the differences between stateless and stateful systems, and impacts of state on parallelism.
• Discuss the differences between Mocks and Stubs/Fakes and where you might use them (answers aren't that important here, just the discussion that would ensue).
• Discuss the concept of YAGNI and explain something you did recently that adhered to this practice.
• Explain what is meant by a sandbox, why you would use one, and identify examples of sandboxes in the wild.
• (more...)

Read more:  Scott Hanselman Computer's Zen

Posted via email from Jasper-net