Those 3 PHP questions

[cancer10]

Hi PHP Gurus,

I have a question for you all. If you are asked to interview a candidate with 5 years of experience in PHP and you are allowed to ask only 3 theoretical questions and based on the answers of those 3 questions you have to select / reject the candidate. What would be those 3 questions?


Thanks & Regards



PS: Mods, if this is not the correct section pls move this thread to the appropriate one.

[djr33]

Hard to say. The basics seem safe, but then someone with 5 years of experience should know a lot more than that.

Are you looking for simple answers (but hard questions), or would you understand an in-depth answer to a detailed question?

One thing that comes to mind is asking about OOP (Object Oriented Programming), why it's useful, etc. It's a good way to know the candidate programs in standard ways and uses PHP to its limits. But I'd assume that anyone with 5 years of experience should know how to deal with this, and it would also be a difficult answer to judge if you aren't yourself an expert on the matter.

Another idea is asking how servers differ and what a developer needs to watch out for. In serverside programming we think of the server as a constant, unlike the browser for Javascript (where the same code might generate very different results). But in reality, moving code from one server to another does have differences and they can severely impact code.
This is also a crucial question in that the only way to know/learn it is to have lots of experience-- it's not something you'd really read about somewhere.
Answers should include things about various PHP versions (including what some versions may/may not include-- I wouldn't worry about details so much, but just things to watch out for) and also other things like whether magic_quotes is turned on.

Finally, I'd suggest a question about a "project" you could discuss with them. I'd ask them to quickly verbally describe building something (maybe a forum, maybe a chatroom, but something fairly complex) and to explain the necessary steps. Then you could assess whether the answer seems reasonable and would work with the workflow in your company/group.

[traq]

1. How have you approached collaborating with others on past projects?
2. What is you approach to solving problems you've never faced before?
3. Where can I see examples of your work and code?

[djr33]

By the way, in thinking about this a little more, I think you might be able to relate PHP to real-world languages (eg, English, French and Chinese). There's no easy way to test proficiency in the languages (there are tests, but it's not clear exactly how accurate they are-- what does it mean to have a 4/5 on a Spanish test, anyway?).

The only real way to know how well someone speaks a language is to talk to them and decide from there. In the same sense, I think seeing examples and talking about the code is really the only way to get a true feeling for someone's ability in PHP. Just like a language, you can get a sense of their fluency, their control/confidence, and whether they struggle or are efficient.