NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/lang/c/18468

Text File | 1992-12-16 | 1.8 KB | 38 lines

Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.iastate.edu!pv0321.vincent.iastate.edu!dschmitz
From: [e-mail] (Daniel C Schmitz)
Subject: Re: How to test a programmer
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (USENET News System)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 16:02:03 GMT
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I didn't see the very first posts of this but I think the general idea was
to test a potential employees knowledge of C by having the tell you what a
piece of code might do, or use some C "tricks" to accomplish a wierd task.

What might be more useful, and this was done to me, is to give potential
employees programming problems.  Tell them to write a solution and mail the
source code to you.  This not only tells you if they are competent, but gives
you an idea of their programming style.

The test that was given to me was something like, you are given a file that
contains a list of coins (pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters).  The job
was to draw the list of coins side by side on the screen, centered left to
right.  The drawing primitives available to you are moveto(x,y) and
drawto(x,y).  The job was for a company involved in graphics.  This not only
tested my programming skills, but my knowledge of graphics algorithms and
my attention to details that the programmer must know but were not provided
with the original problem description.  E.g. what is the format of the file,
should the coins be centered top to bottom with relation to each other and/or
to the screen.  Will the input contain errors and/or more coins than will fit
on the screen.  What are the sizes of the coins.

Dan Schmitz
[e-mail]