Re: What's the best language to start with

[Tim Behrendsen <tim@airshields.com>]

On Sat, 10 Aug 1996, DAVID A MOLNAR wrote:

> In article <01bb8540$59ac8420$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> you wrote:
> : I should say that my test had them render solutions in C.  I
> : gave them a moderately easy but not trivial algorithm to
> : implement, and they just plain couldn't do it.
> 	I'm not a CS grad, but I can't help wondering what is considered 
> a moderately simple algorithm at this level.  What sort of description 
> would you give to a person in that position? I would imagine that a fair 
> level of mathmatical literacy might be expected, not to mention some 
> acquaintance with the field you are hiring for...
> 	May I respectfully ask what kind of an algorithm it is/was? If 
> you're still using it as a test for job applicants, I understand if you 
> don't wish to disclose the particulars. I only ask because I am currently 
> finishing up a CS1/CS2 sequence and have been following this debate with 
> increasing interest. Although I can't help but wonder why no one has yet 
> mentioned Scheme (my own 'first'). :-) It's caused me to take a look at 
> what I have and have not learned in the year or so that I've been taking 
> classes...and what I need to learn in the future. Fortunately, I have 
> some years yet until graduating from college. :-)

I have been intentionally not giving my problems away, because it's hard
to think of good solid problems that can be solved in a reasonable amount
of time that doesn't get too much into specialized knowledge that
would make them unfair.  Basically, I have a problem that is arithmetic
oriented, to see if someone can think mathemetically; a logic problem
to see if they understand bits and logic; stuff like that.

I will tell you one "bonus" problem that I give to see if they
are paying attention; I don't really factor it in much when I decide to
hire someone or not because it's not really a fair question.  I love
the problem, though, because it's a pure "thinking" problem.

----
You are writing a preprocessor program that takes C source as
its input.  The preprocessor replaces all variables and symbols
in the program with unique names of the form VARxxxxxx, where
"xxxxxx" is an incrementing decimal number.  Describe what is
needed to handle the case where the input source file already
contains a variable of that form.
----

I would say about 95-98% of the applicants get this question
wrong.  I have had people I respect give the "obvious" wrong answer,
though, so it's mostly a matter of not really thinking about it
before answering.

You should see some of the answers I get that are WAY off,
though.  It's really scary.  At least 20% of the answers are
some form of "I've never done a C preprocessor before, so I
don't know." Yes, these are people with full-blown degrees.

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)