Interviewing programmers

sylvan wrote:



evildictaitor wrote:  In ASM a delegate is any memory length of n bits that is addressable In C a delegate is a size_t, which is an int or long or long long depending on the processor size. In C++ a delegate is not significantly changed from C, but it is type-checked at compile time. In C# a delegate is a C++ function pointer which is (and I quote) Delegates are roughly similar to function pointers in C++; however, delegates are type-safe and secure.

You can do the same trick with, for example, "a class" ("in ASM a class is a slab of memory".. etc.), doesn't make it true. A delegate, which is a C# concept, is only very superficially similar to a function pointer, but is really nothing like it. Like I explained, a delegate is a lexical closure, which is pretty isomorphic to classes (you can model one with the other). A function pointer is just a way of doing an indirect function call. Very, very different.

The fact that delegates are also type safe etc. is nice and all, but that's not the key difference.

Wow! shouting 'NO' at someone's explanation of something is pretty lame - but to then go on and impose your misunderstanding of the difference between the System.Delegate class and the C# compiler generated class allowing for closures as fact is - frankly- embarassing for you. Bless. You should download Reflector it will help you avoid these kind of situations in future.

That's to Sylvan BTW...

blowdart wrote:

Oh yea one funny thing this week. The guy I was interviewing recognised the questions I'd taken from Scott Hanselman's interview questions blog posts.

Yes he stumbled on some of them (why can't people explain the difference between a thread and a process?) but the fact that he recognised the source was a big bonus point in his direction.

blowdart wrote:

why can't people explain the difference between a thread and a process?

"Under what circumstances would you, or would you not, use (A) static polymorphism, (B) dynamic polymorphism, and (C) the Barton-Nackman trick?"  Then, "How many different ways is the keyword 'static' overloaded - and why???"