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Ask HN: I'm Looking for Interview Question about Java Around Web Development

1 points by merb ↗ HN
Hello, currently we are hiring for a Java Developer (middle skill) and looking for "good" interview questsions, however I'm actually a little bit clueless, about what are good questions. We don't want the task last longer than maximum of 15 minutes and it should be around Java and Web development.

We will probably start with Fizz Buzz, but after that we wan't to be a little bit more specific to our problems instead of asking algorhitmic questions. I tought about creating a small guestbook with java (framework doesn't matter). would that be a reasonable choice?

2 comments

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brudgers
Fifteen minutes does not seem like long enough for a professional to set up a development environment or to flesh out the problem for which a guest book app is possibly a reasonable solution.

To put it another way, perhaps a mid-level developer be thinking about parameterizing FizzBuzz instead of quickly hard coding magic numbers and strings.

Good luck.

liquidcool
What aptitude are you trying to test for? Do you already have a code base in Java you might use for inspiration? You mention framework doesn't matter, but the difference in what you can accomplish in 15 minutes is significant if you're comparing, say, core Java EE and Grails.

Agree with brudgers that 15 minutes is short. You're going to need a fill in the blanks type of assignment, where they import a project into their favorite IDE and can just add methods to a skeleton class. This means you need to test importing/running in at least Eclipse and IntelliJ, and maybe a regular text editor (Emacs/VIM/Sublime) with a simple build/deploy/test script (Maven or Gradle).

In other words, you have to factor away all the time sucking annoyance associated with spinning up a project you haven't touched before.

This is a hard problem, would be interested in discussing it further with you.