Question for all the Software Engineers out there

[OulOat]

When you interviewed for job(s), did they test you on how well you coded by asking you to produce some code right there? If so, what did they ask, in which language, and what is job(s)/company was it for?

The thing is, although I am pretty good with JAVA and other obscure languages that we have been using for the past 2 years in college, I am very flakey with C/C++ (which I heard is the most popular languages still). I used to know it well, but my knowledge has gotten rusty because of lack of use. I have heard of MS testing you by asking you to write something with pointers and stuff; stuff which I don't remember since I haven't messed with pointers since my introduction to JAVA. Thanks for the input!

 

[TommyVercetti]

Went to an interview for a computer programmer position, and they made me write some code. They were just checking for logic and thought process

 

[OulOat]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Went to an interview for a computer programmer position, and they made me write some code. They were just checking for logic and thought process

Can you be more detailed please? Like which language and, if you still remember, the question and company?

 

[Maverick]

depends on the position...you'll never get asked Java questions at a microsoft interview

asking them if you can write the solution in java will probably get you a handshake and a "we'll let you know" response instantly.

 

[Ameesh]

Yes: They asked a lot of questions, it would take too long to list them down, usually in C and C++ and some Java, the companies i had to do this for was Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Amazon, various consulting companies, practically every interview i ever did had at least 1 guy asking me coding questions.

For the MS interview you are defintely going to need to know your pointers, i have given and taken interviews at MS and one thing you will defintely get a no-hire for is poor c/c++ skills, make sure you brush up. keeping that in mind they look at making sure your code is more correct logically then syntactically, if you forget a semi colon or somehting nobody will bust your balls but if you leak memory or your pointer arethmitic etc. is off you fail.

one last thing, i have done well over 100 interviews. Out of them all the MS one is the hardest, if you can pass that you can pass any of them.

 

[TommyVercetti]

Originally posted by: OulOat

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Went to an interview for a computer programmer position, and they made me write some code. They were just checking for logic and thought process

Can you be more detailed please? Like which language and, if you still remember, the question and company?

It was Texas A&M University, the position was called System Programmer II. They were looking for a Java programmer. The interview started with a few basic resume questions and then moved on to the programming question. They asked me to get infront of the white board and write a program that outputs the fibbunaci series for a given number. They wanted to me think aloud during this time and write the code in two ways, recursive and non recursive.

 

[OulOat]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
Yes: They asked a lot of questions, it would take too long to list them down, usually in C and C++ and some Java, the companies i had to do this for was Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Amazon, various consulting companies, practically every interview i ever did had at least 1 guy asking me coding questions.

For the MS interview you are defintely going to need to know your pointers, i have given and taken interviews at MS and one thing you will defintely get a no-hire for is poor c/c++ skills, make sure you brush up. keeping that in mind they look at making sure your code is more correct logically then syntactically, if you forget a semi colon or somehting nobody will bust your balls but if you leak memory or your pointer arethmitic etc. is off you fail.

one last thing, i have done well over 100 interviews. Out of them all the MS one is the hardest, if you can pass that you can pass any of them.

Well, I'm not really interested in MS; I was just providing that as an example. Hm, perhaps I wasn't to clear on what I was looking for. I'm mainly interested in the questions they asked you, so I can prep up.

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti

It was Texas A&M University, the position was called System Programmer II. They were looking for a Java programmer. The interview started with a few basic resume questions and then moved on to the programming question. They asked me to get infront of the white board and write a program that outputs the fibbunaci series for a given number. They wanted to me think aloud during this time and write the code in two ways, recursive and non recursive.

This is exactly what I'm looking for. Now I know to read over fib sequences (even though I already know how). Thanks everyone for your input.

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti

Originally posted by: OulOat

Originally posted by: TommyVercetti
Went to an interview for a computer programmer position, and they made me write some code. They were just checking for logic and thought process

Can you be more detailed please? Like which language and, if you still remember, the question and company?

It was Texas A&M University, the position was called System Programmer II. They were looking for a Java programmer. The interview started with a few basic resume questions and then moved on to the programming question. They asked me to get infront of the white board and write a program that outputs the fibbunaci series for a given number. They wanted to me think aloud during this time and write the code in two ways, recursive and non recursive.

to give you a little perspective in an MS interview that would be a warm up question.

on the hard side you may have a quation like reconstruct a tree where you are given any two of the following three traversals (preorder, inorder, postorder)

each interviewer may give you two easy and 1 or maybe 2 hard questions depeneding on if you give up or complete the problems