Typical Programming Interview Questions

DesperateDan

Just wondering what in people's experience the kind of questions are that could be asked in a spoken interview for an entry-level games programming job? (Posted this in gamedevelopers.ie too for maximum responsage!)

Carpo II

When I went through this, all the interviewers mostly asked about the basics of the language (C++) to see if I properly understood what was going on rather than just regurgitating stuff learned by rote.
So the questions would be stuff like: explain the differences between stack allocation and heap allocation, give pros and cons for both and then explain why you would choose one over the other in a given circumstance. Have you ever written a memory manager? How have you managed memory leaks, and memory profiling in your own projects? Have you ever implemented a ref counting strategy? That type of thing.
Or, explain const correctness, how to do it, and what the implications are for doing it correctly and incorrectly.
Explain how inheritance works (behind the scenes how vptrs work etc) and what the implications are for using inheritance, (what was so bad about the Diamond of death came up a few times IIRC).
Usually there was a few 'bonus' questions like explaining how mutable or explicit work and give an example of why you would use them.

Overall, there wasn't that many 'gamey' questions and they tended to be pretty general. Explain some culling strategies in 3d graphics. Explain what a given sequence of matrix operations will actually do. Had I any experience with modelling packages? What kind of shaders I had written etc.

Hope that all helps

DesperateDan

That's actually gold thanks a lot. I'm just going over some C++ stuff now and I'm a little rusty so knowing some of these topics exist at least is certainly very useful!

satchmo

Do you mean in person or over the phone? If it's in person, there will also probably be a bit of a code test, maybe some whiteboarding. If it's over the phone, they're more likely to ask about your interest in games, get an idea of your personality and experience and see if you're a good fit for the team. In this case, the first thing you need to take into account is who you're talking to.

If it's HR, they're doing a pre-screen to make sure you're not a loony, you're not lying about who you are, that you generally fit the position they're recruiting for, and that you would be a good fit for the team (friendly, not an asshole).

If it's a programmer, they'll be generally trying to figure out if you're smart. There will be some basic programming questions (what's the difference between the stack and the heap, what's a vtable, what does the keyword X do, when would you use an assert vs. a warning, why would you mark a destructor as virtual... the list is endless). Also maybe some basic vector math - dot product & cross product, or some basic geometry problems. In these cases, don't stress out if you don't know the answer straight away - they're more interested in how you solve the problem rather than coming up with the right answer.

Assuming you don't have any professional experience, they will probably ask you about personal projects - your college projects (if applicable), but also stuff you've done in your spare time. The sign of a good entry-level programmer is one who has tinkered with lots of different stuff in their spare time, purely out of curiosity and for the fun of it. So be prepared to talk about this stuff - give a good overview of all the different things you've done, but go into more detail on the one you're most proud of and you think is the most impressive. They'll always be looking for stuff to ask you about, so they should naturally ask you more about that if you frame it right.

Don't be too stressed about it - I've interviewed a bunch of people for entry-level positions, and the only two things I look for are passion and smarts. So aim to impress but don't be cocky (some people think they know more than they actually do, especially juniors), be friendly, and talk a lot!

DesperateDan

Wicked thanks!

Yeah it's skype, and as I haven't had an actual programming job yet I'm hoping he will go easy on me but I reckon it's as you say a pre-screening to make sure I'm actually worth sending in for a proper interview

DesperateDan

This is fairly terrifying!

satchmo

Heh actually that's a pretty good list. Obviously aimed more towards net programmers, but a lot of it still applies to game programming. Of those code questions, I've been asked Fibonacci, string reverse and count bits in various interviews.

Genghiz Cohen

Been asked to find if a number is odd or even without the Modulus (%) operator.