Interview questions for php programmers

[phpprogrammer]

Dear All,

In the following link you will get the list of php interview questions


http://bapanapalli.95mb.com/interviewquestions.htm

regards,
bvsueshbabu

[onion2k]

Theres some interesting questions in there. They're not exactly PHP questions, but certainly most things are the sort of things one might expect a PHP developer to know. I reckon I could think up reasonable answers to about 90% of them in interview conditions.

However..

24. What is the use of friend function?

Thats got me baffled. I've absolutely no idea what "friend" is, and theres no mention of it on php.net either.

Anyone?

[LordShryku]

They extend child functions in a class, which in turn will aggravate the parent functions, and make their job much harder to do.

[pohopo]

I would expand the OOP question. Knowing what it is does not mean much and it is critical to any large scale development. I would give the person a project scenario and have them draw a UML class diagram for it. That can tell you a lot more then many of the memorization questions you have.

[BuzzLY]

Good idea... IF UML knowledge is a UML requirement.

I find when conducting job interviews that it is better to know what concepts you wish to talk about, but to also be flexible. For instance, perhaps the person I am interviewing does not know UML, but understands OOP very well. With rigid questions, all I will find out is that s/he knows OOP, but can't draw a UML diagram.

If I am more flexible in my discussion with them, I might ask more questions about their knowledge of OOP principles, and perhaps find that they were a contributing developer for a PEAR project. At that point, if he doesn't know UML, I'd still hire him, and simply request that he get up to speed on UML diagrams. Your questionaire is nice, but it doesn't allow for such flexibility.

I don't believe interviews should be like tests. I believe they should be a means to really get to know the person, find out how they interact with others, what their passions are, what their depth of knowledge is in their areas of expertise, etc. The best answer I could get from an interviewee is "I don't know it well, but I know where to find the answer. If they offer a training class, I'd be happy to take it and become more proficient."

But that's just me. Everyone has different ways of interviewing, and different needs to be met.

[phpprogrammer]

Dear Friend,

Friend functions is in C++ language,

It comes in oops concepts


regards,
bvsureshbabu

[Weedpacket]

May I ask what the story is with all these interview questions (http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10257167)?

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
May I ask what the story is with all these interview questions (http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10257167)? Ha! WP, I thought I was just having de ja vu, but I didn't take the time to search for it. Thanks for reminding me I'm not crazy after all :)

[BuzzLY]

This questionnaire only does one thing -- it tries to demonstrate that you are more knowledgeable about PHP than the person you are interviewing. Frankly, if the interviewee can answer all of those questions without looking it up, I wouldn't hire him -- it probably means he is incredibly book-smart, but can't code worth a darn.

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by BuzzLY
Frankly, if the interviewee can answer all of those questions without looking it up, I wouldn't hire him -- it probably means he is incredibly book-smart, but can't code worth a darn. It also probably means his brain is entirely full, thus discounting him from potentially learning anything new.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by Elizabeth
It also probably means his brain is entirely full, thus discounting him from potentially learning anything new. I think that's my problem :( - either that or it's become calcified with age. :(:( I only barely managed to learn how to drive in time :(:(:(

[Elizabeth]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
I only barely managed to learn how to drive in time :(:(:( And so we see the true reason why Weed usually forgets to wear his pants. The driving thing pushed him to maximum capacity, poor soul. It's a good thing we can still capitalize on all the other useless (ok, sometimes useful) information spewing forth from his gray matter.

[RossC0]

Why not set them a test of coding something, using your environment.

See how the code looks - and quiz them about their approach, logic and reasoning.

I for one have no idea how the Zend architecture works! I also couldn't tell you what the regular expression to split an email address is, in PHP or not...

I dont see them as rememberable - sure if I need to know, I can find them out - because as a professional web dev - thats what I do - I problem solve!

[BuzzLY]

If you want some good insight into the interview process, check out the Interview page (http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/) at www.sellsbrothers.com. Microsoft's HR department thinks highly of the site.

[rgermain]

This almost looks like a final I would have taken in college, even then they would have given us 10 minutes of open book time. I fully understand trying to hire the best of the best, but sometimes its not always what you know, but if you know where to find it. I mean sure I could probably do all that stuff, just give me some time to look it up and figure it out. Even to this day I look stuff up in the PHP Manual for some of the simplest functions. Can't remember everything and if you can then more power to you.

[bubblenut]

Yep, my answer to quite a few of those questions (even if I knew the answer in some cases) would just be php.net/[insert-relevent-function/group-name-here]

[Weedpacket]

Aye, I've got my wee "phpman" script so's I can run "phpman xml-set-processing-instruction-handler" from the command line; and I've got a PHP lookup widget in Firefox. In the last half hour I've used them three times.

[bubblenut]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Aye, I've got my wee "phpman" script so's I can run "phpman xml-set-processing-instruction-handler" from the command line; and I've got a PHP lookup widget in Firefox. In the last half hour I've used them three times.

Oooh, now that sounds cool. Can't persuade you to stick it up in the code critique or somewhere can I?

[piersk]

Also, can you please stick up a link to the firefox extension for PHP (I'm assuming thats what it is)

[bubblenut]

I acn help with that one, search for php here (http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html). There's a phpbuilder one as well.

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by bubblenut
Oooh, now that sounds cool. Can't persuade you to stick it up in the code critique or somewhere can I?
No, really, it is wee. It's a 44-byte shell script that just embeds its argument into a templated filename of the form function.$1.html and attempts to open the resulting file - no error checking or searching or anything like that.

Originally posted by piersk
Also, can you please stick up a link to the firefox extension for PHP (I'm assuming thats what it is) It's actually just a (Firefox/Mozilla) bookmark:

Name: PHP Search
Location: http://www.php.net/%s
Keyword: php

I've got a bookmark folder with about half-a-dozen widgets like this.

[bubblenut]

Oh come on. You get to bask in our constant adoration but never give any code. You know damned well even if your code was completely poopy we'd all be thinking "well, he must have so much else on his mind this must have just been just a five min job."
Personally, I'd say you have a responsibility to the board now that your post count has risen so high :p

[Weedpacket]

\downloads\php\manual\function.%1.html
So it's Windows. Shoot me.

[bubblenut]

WOW! I was not expecting something quite that short. What does Windows open up html files in, the default web browser? You could use Lynx on a Linux box and never have to leave a black background :D

[phpprogrammer]

Dear Friends,

you can get the answers from

http://www.discussweb.com/showthread.php?t=644&highlight=interview+questions

regards,
bvsureshbabu

[pohopo]

It's actually just a (Firefox/Mozilla) bookmark:

Name: PHP Search
Location: http://www.php.net/%s
Keyword: php

I've got a bookmark folder with about half-a-dozen widgets like this.

Thanks, I learn something new everyday. This will save me a few extra clicks.