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Programming Topics + CVu Journal Vol 30, #2 - May 2018
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Title: The New C++ Interview

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 09 May 2018 18:07:29 +01:00 or Wed, 09 May 2018 18:07:29 +01:00

Summary: Pete Goodliffe introduces a new way to test programming skills.

Body: 

I’ve been hiring C++ developers for many years now. There has been much debate about the best (most humane, most fair, most inclusive, most accurate...) way to perform these kinds of technical interview. But I may have the solution.

You want to hire people who…

  • know C++
  • can solve tricky, interesting problems
  • think laterally and logically
  • have a sense of humour

So here, I present (with apologies to your sanity) my latest interview test paradigm. Forget coding tests. Forget inane questions about the number of beagles in Brooklyn. Forget asking for history of your interviewee’s programming career.

You can find the perfect C++ coding candidate simply using the magic of C++ Dingbats. It works like the old British quiz show ‘Catchphrase’. A well-known C++ (or general programming) term is represented pictorially. You need to work out what that term is from the picture. Often you just need to say what you see, or work out the puzzle logically (or, sometimes, cyrptically).

For example, this:

is a dangling pointer. Simple, and obvious, eh? So now you see how it works.

How well can you get on with these interview posers? Are you the perfect C++ interview candidate? Answers below. Don’t peek until you’ve tried to solve the puzzles!

Answers

  1. Template metaprogramming
  2. Pimpl Idiom
  3. Base class
  4. Assignment operator
  5. auto_ptr
  6. Trigraph
  7. Multiple inheritance
  8. Digraph
  9. std::unordered_set
  10. Boolean parameter
  11. signed char
  12. Liskov Substition Principle
  13. long double
  14. Hash map
  15. Private member function
  16. Inline function
  17. Tail recursion
  18. K&R
  19. Anonymous namespace
  20. SFINAE
  21. C#
  22. Floating point
  23. Object oriented
  24. Syntax

Image credits

Maxim Kulikov, Aleksandr Vector, lastspark, DTDesign // Linseed Studio // Creative Stall, Garrett Knoll, Anchor Design // Garrett Knoll, Deemak Daksina S // Kido Chang, Simon Child, WARPAINT Media Inc. // Iconic // Made by Made // Atif Arshad, G // Lil Squid, zidney // Oksana Latysheva, priyanka // iconsmind.com, Fahmihorizon, Andrea Novoa, See Link, Llisole // Cezary Lopacinski

[Web Editor's Note: The images in this HTML version of the article have been increased in size for the convenience of those of us who have to wear glasses. ☺]

Notes: 

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