Funny interview question
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Hi guys Today we were interviewing some candidates for some programmer jobs. My boss suggested a few interview questions to us and one of them was this :- Write a valid C program that would not comopile under C++ Hmmmm, now what kinda question is that? Would it be a proper test of a candidate? As for me I was confused for a while till I thought of type safety in C++. I haven't tried it out but I presume that if we do some unsafe type casting it'll be valid in C but invalid in C++. What do ya guys think? Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Nishant S wrote: Write a valid C program that would not comopile under C++
int main()
{
#ifdef __cplusplus
this is such bad syntax
#endif
return 0;
}:laugh: Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff
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The task was opposite: to write a valid C program that will not compile in C++. "this" is not a valid "C" keyword. Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
No, that's exactly what I did. My code is valid C but it will not compile under C++ because it uses a C++ keyword as a variable. :confused: You can just as easily write:
main()
{
int private=1, protected=1, mutable=1;
}and so on. All valid C since none of those are reserved words. --Mike-- Just released - 1ClickPicGrabber - Grab & organize pictures from your favorite web pages, with 1 click! My really out-of-date homepage Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
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Hi guys Today we were interviewing some candidates for some programmer jobs. My boss suggested a few interview questions to us and one of them was this :- Write a valid C program that would not comopile under C++ Hmmmm, now what kinda question is that? Would it be a proper test of a candidate? As for me I was confused for a while till I thought of type safety in C++. I haven't tried it out but I presume that if we do some unsafe type casting it'll be valid in C but invalid in C++. What do ya guys think? Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Might get some interesting answers! :-D
The following statement about your geekness is true. The previous statement about your geekness is false.
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Nishant S wrote: What do ya guys think? Stupid question and us interviewee's, subjected to mind game questions should be able to physically beat interviewer's that ask crap like this half to death. ;P ...and if you wondering it's 1 months tomorrow. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
Heh, that reminds me of how I felt when I got the question "what's the difference between a macro and an inline function?" I got this at Microsoft. I guess the interviewer thought I'd been able to get through two phone interviews without letting it slip that I don't actually know C++ well enough to know the difference. X| --Mike-- Just released - 1ClickPicGrabber - Grab & organize pictures from your favorite web pages, with 1 click! My really out-of-date homepage Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
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Might get some interesting answers! :-D
The following statement about your geekness is true. The previous statement about your geekness is false.
Megan Forbes wrote: Might get some interesting answers! But I never asked a question :-( Just stated a funny incident and then everyone goes angry and start asking me what good it does :-( Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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No, that's exactly what I did. My code is valid C but it will not compile under C++ because it uses a C++ keyword as a variable. :confused: You can just as easily write:
main()
{
int private=1, protected=1, mutable=1;
}and so on. All valid C since none of those are reserved words. --Mike-- Just released - 1ClickPicGrabber - Grab & organize pictures from your favorite web pages, with 1 click! My really out-of-date homepage Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
Sorry, you're right of course! Silly me X| Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
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Megan Forbes wrote: Might get some interesting answers! But I never asked a question :-( Just stated a funny incident and then everyone goes angry and start asking me what good it does :-( Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
sorry - I meant some of the people be interviewed might give you some cool answers to the C / C++ code question that would be worth sharing :cool:
The following statement about your geekness is true. The previous statement about your geekness is false.
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Nishant S wrote: What do ya guys think? Stupid question and us interviewee's, subjected to mind game questions should be able to physically beat interviewer's that ask crap like this half to death. ;P ...and if you wondering it's 1 months tomorrow. Michael Martin Australia mjm68@tpg.com.au "I personally love it because I can get as down and dirty as I want on the backend, while also being able to dabble with fun scripting and presentation games on the front end." - Chris Maunder 15/07/2002
Michael Martin wrote: ...and if you wondering it's 1 months tomorrow. 11 rather :-( Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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Michael Dunn wrote: Seems rather silly as an interview question, though. Jus what I thought (anyway I had tons of other stuff to ask which made more sense to me) Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
You should rather ask him whether he knows CodeProject.com. If he/she doesn't, I would recommend NOT taking him. If he answers "YES of course", ask him whether he is a member, and only take him if his member ID is less than 50000. -- Scanned MSDN Mag ad with YOUR name: www.magerquark.de/misc/CodeProject.html See me: www.magerquark.de
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Megan Forbes wrote: Might get some interesting answers! But I never asked a question :-( Just stated a funny incident and then everyone goes angry and start asking me what good it does :-( Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
The interview result might be quite funny: a developer A is given a job because his program did not compile. Developer's program compiled unfortuntely, so he's not got a job. An exceptional case where you have to show your skills in writing a program that does not compile. :) Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
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You should rather ask him whether he knows CodeProject.com. If he/she doesn't, I would recommend NOT taking him. If he answers "YES of course", ask him whether he is a member, and only take him if his member ID is less than 50000. -- Scanned MSDN Mag ad with YOUR name: www.magerquark.de/misc/CodeProject.html See me: www.magerquark.de
Uwe Keim wrote: You should rather ask him whether he knows CodeProject.com. If he/she doesn't, I would recommend NOT taking him. The problem is that only an elite minority have regular internet access in Trivandrum. Forget regular, I wonder how many people even manage to chk mail at least once a week! This is the "3rd" word Uwe and Trivandrum is a rather 3rd worldish 3rd world city. Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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The interview result might be quite funny: a developer A is given a job because his program did not compile. Developer's program compiled unfortuntely, so he's not got a job. An exceptional case where you have to show your skills in writing a program that does not compile. :) Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
Well, most people I interviewed today wouldn't write a 15 line program (C or C++) without making 20 errors. I was horrified by the lack of quality in the candidates :-( Things are really bad now I guess! Everyone is doing Java and C# nowadays. Too few C++ coders left on this planet! Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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Hi guys Today we were interviewing some candidates for some programmer jobs. My boss suggested a few interview questions to us and one of them was this :- Write a valid C program that would not comopile under C++ Hmmmm, now what kinda question is that? Would it be a proper test of a candidate? As for me I was confused for a while till I thought of type safety in C++. I haven't tried it out but I presume that if we do some unsafe type casting it'll be valid in C but invalid in C++. What do ya guys think? Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Trivia should not be included in interview questions.
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The task was opposite: to write a valid C program that will not compile in C++. "this" is not a valid "C" keyword. Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
Vagif Abilov wrote: "this" is not a valid "C" keyword. Exactly the point. Because "this" is not a C keyword it can be used as an identifier so his prog will compile as a C program and not as a C++ program
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You should rather ask him whether he knows CodeProject.com. If he/she doesn't, I would recommend NOT taking him. If he answers "YES of course", ask him whether he is a member, and only take him if his member ID is less than 50000. -- Scanned MSDN Mag ad with YOUR name: www.magerquark.de/misc/CodeProject.html See me: www.magerquark.de
If his/her/its member ID is under 100 then he/she/it must be a genius then! ;P
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Well, most people I interviewed today wouldn't write a 15 line program (C or C++) without making 20 errors. I was horrified by the lack of quality in the candidates :-( Things are really bad now I guess! Everyone is doing Java and C# nowadays. Too few C++ coders left on this planet! Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Nishant S wrote: Everyone is doing Java and C# nowadays. Too few C++ coders left on this planet! I'm pretty sure there are more C++ programmers than C# guys. And probably more C/C++ programmers than Java/C# together. Could it be that it was just C++ guys making 20 errors? :) Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
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Nishant S wrote: Everyone is doing Java and C# nowadays. Too few C++ coders left on this planet! I'm pretty sure there are more C++ programmers than C# guys. And probably more C/C++ programmers than Java/C# together. Could it be that it was just C++ guys making 20 errors? :) Vagif Abilov MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway Hex is for sissies. Real men use binary. And the most hardcore types use only zeros - uppercase zeros and lowercase zeros. Tomasz Sowinski
Vagif Abilov wrote: Could it be that it was just C++ guys making 20 errors? Hmmmm, could be true. I guess it'd be better for everyone if fellows like that took up C# or Java Nish :)
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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Hi guys Today we were interviewing some candidates for some programmer jobs. My boss suggested a few interview questions to us and one of them was this :- Write a valid C program that would not comopile under C++ Hmmmm, now what kinda question is that? Would it be a proper test of a candidate? As for me I was confused for a while till I thought of type safety in C++. I haven't tried it out but I presume that if we do some unsafe type casting it'll be valid in C but invalid in C++. What do ya guys think? Nish
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
I agree it is a really stupid question, BUT if someone can answer it on the spot , you've got a winner !! IMO, the *main* thing to check in an interview is attitude. BTW: How about this ?
file a.c -------- // This trivial program has no statements // C cant deal with '//' style comments -
Just use a C++ keyword that is not in C, such as: main() { int this=1; } ;) Seems rather silly as an interview question, though. --Mike-- Just released - 1ClickPicGrabber - Grab & organize pictures from your favorite web pages, with 1 click! My really out-of-date homepage Sonork-100.19012 Acid_Helm
Quick and easy :-D Regards, Brian Dela :suss:
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Vagif Abilov wrote: Could it be that it was just C++ guys making 20 errors? Hmmmm, could be true. I guess it'd be better for everyone if fellows like that took up C# or Java Nish :)
Author of the romantic comedy Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
Nishant S wrote: I guess it'd be better for everyone if fellows like that took up C# or Java No, it'd be better for everyone if guys like that went back to work at MacDonalds instead of thinking "anyone can be a programmer". Someone who writes bad C++ is likely to write bad C# and bad Java as well. Paul