Developer interview questions

A while back I had to interview some people for a developer role at work so came up with a few questions, combining a few from the web with some of my own. This is essentially a note to myself for next time I’m interviewing.

jQuery
What's a jQuery selector? How would you select an item by its ID? By its class?
Give some examples of JQuery UI effects and widgets and what they could be used for

.NET
What's an interface? Compare and contrast with an abstract class
How does memory management differ between .NET and a non-managed language? How can we make .NET behave more like a non-managed language?
What are generics? Why use List<> instead of ArrayList?
What's a virtual function? How does it relate to OOP?

Web
What is a RESTful web service? Why are they preferred to SOAP web services?
What are the common data formats returned by an AJAX web service call? Is one better than the other? What about if you wanted to call it from a fat client?
Name and describe several HTTP status codes
Name the various HTTP verbs and when they are used

General
Your application has a performance problem, how would you investigate the issue?
An error occurs in your web application but only in production and only happens occasionally, how do you go about tracking down the problem?
What are some of the issues around multi-threaded applications?
Discuss some ways of ensuring code quality remains high in a project

Google wants me

OK, not quite but I did receive an email the other day saying

Google Sydney Engineering division are visiting London to talk about R&D in Australia. You have either been referred by a friend or current Google employee as someone who may be interested in joining us for a special G'Day Google event at Google UK in London.  The evening will include plenty of food and beverages, Aussie style of course...blah...blah... If you are also interested in what is happening in Google London, this will also be a chance to meet local Googlers who can give you an insight into our local engineering divisions.

This intrigued me. First, who had referred me? I don't know anyone at Google but I do know a few people in Australia, so I guess it must have been one of them (perhaps my boss is trying to give me a gentle hint!).

And why are Google Australia coming to the UK to try and recruit people? Do they think all our current bar staff want to return home and start working for Google? Are a lot of the Ozzies over here IT people? Or are they after getting UK residents to move over there?

Anyway, I was interested in going along, not because I think I'd have any chance of working for Google since my predominantly Windows background wouldn't fit in with their open source Linux and Python development. I also doubt I'd manage to refrain from laughing when asked one of their typical interview questions, presuming I got that far. But I was interested in knowing what they do and the kind of people who work there and they did mention beer... OK, they didn't mention beer but they did mention Australian beverages which I can only assume means beer.

They provided a link to their site to get more details and to RSVP. Except it doesn't work and hasn't done for two days. I'm wondering if this is some kind of test in itself, to weed out those people not clever enough to figure out how to find their web page.

Update - After a little research it would appear the URL provided on their email is a link to one of Google's internal subdomains. Clearly not all of Google's employees are geniuses.

Recruiters - how about reading my CV?

I'm not looking for a job currently but my CV must be out there somewhere on the internet from the last time I was looking for work. And it's pretty clear quite a few recruiters just do a keyword search and send out emails without actually ever reading my CV. So I've had emails about C++ positions, which I haven't touched for almost 10 years, PHP jobs, which I'm familar with but wouldn't consider a strong point, testing jobs and even jobs in the US.

Maybe the 'throw enough shit at the wall and some of it will stick' technique works but I suspect it's not highly effective. I tend to remember the recruiters who actually bother to ring me up and actually listen to what I have to say and if I ever need to contact a recruiter again I'll go to them first, since they appear to care about placing people in the right job. The others are simply helping to confirm the bad reputation that recruiters have.