Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello!
I am interviewing new code monkeys. The test we currently give code monkeys to fill in is OLD and DULL. Here is one of the current questions:

Here is another:

I need various questions, because I want everyone to get some right and some wrong. I've written the easy ones, but writing harder ones is more difficult because something I find hard might be easy to someone else, and vice-versa.

So, if any of you can thing of a hard question about PHP (specifically OO-type stuff), MySQL, Javascript or CSS that can be answered without having to write an essay, I would be interested in seeing them.

For CSS get them to tell you the width of a box in IE with padding and borders applied or similar?

http://fizzbuzz.rubyforge.org/ - except in PHP, obv.

What does this code output (the number of people I know who don't understand the ternary operator is staggering):



Why doesn't the following code print the message over two lines, as you would expect? (strings in single quotes don't evaluate special characters like \r\n)

I already have a question about the ternary operator (they have to write one). I will yoink the second one.

I'm still a learner at all this PHP stuff but I understood Grim...'s question on the array pointer thing and I've seen the ternary operator used a bit (I must admit, I still write stuff out the long way as I find it easier to follow).

However, what's the best way to learn more on this stuff? Are you two purely self-taught or are there some decent books/courses out there? I only get to dabble in this stuff from time to time in this job, but it'd be nice to be doing things properly rather than cobbling bits of code together till it works.

That's how I learnt

Pick something way out of your comfort zone (I wrote a forum), and make it. It'll take ages and it'll be shit, but when you make the next one it'll be better.

Yup, agree with Grim. I'm entirely self taught. PHP makes it ridiculously easy to write terrible and insecure code, but once you read up on best practices you start to get better at it. Been doing it for 9 years now. Jesus.

The security thing is something I'm always trying to address, especially as some of the stuff I do is related to HR type stuff so data protection and all that. Saying that, I had a poke around a competitor's system recently and found a big security/privacy flaw within five minutes so at at least it's not just me who is amateurish at this.

I've started to point-blank refuse to work with PHP code written by other agencies because it seems that for every one that actually knows what they're doing, there's another 1,000 that don't.

I've seen all sorts of stupid shit. Storing credit card numbers in plain text in a mySQL database, storing passwords in plain text, and then this (which isn't a security or privacy issue, but is just retarded) written by my predecessor here before he was expunged:


(text paraphrased)

It looks like a retarded language if it forces you to do things like that

Bwuh?
What was he doing?


It doesn't.

That's, erm, special.

It's not the language that's retarded in this case.

Possible here

I'm no coder, but couldn't he just put the comma inside the quotes?

You'd think so wouldn't you? Does it not allow that?

Yeah, that's what's retarded about it.

With levels of weirdness that great, I'm surprised he didn't set up variables for every single character.

What's especially weird about it is that he didn't create a variable for \r\n. I could almost understand creating a variable for \r\n because languages like Visual Basic have vbCrLf variables, but for a comma? Madness.

Yeah, I thought that. Nutbar.

And in another twist of fate, a guy I'm dealing with now has set up a subfolder on his domain to contain fairly sensitive information. There's no security on it, but no matter, because he's going to give the folder an obscure name and turn off spider-crawling. Sorted!

I made that mistake once a few years ago, never again.

Do elaborate, chap!

To be fair, should the English language ever adopt a different character to replace the comma, his code is robust againt the change.

Let's replace it with a SarcMark.

The client wanted enquiries from their contact form sent via e-mail and a HTML version to be created in an area for them to access. I didn't do it how I should have done it, and had a HTML template populated by entries from a database, I created flat HTML files and stored them in a directory on the server. A web-accessible directory.

Didn't think about that though, as I'd programmed a back-end interface that was password protected that would pull the HTML files through for them. So in my mind, it was secure.

Search engine found the directory, which didn't have indexing disabled, indexed all the enquiries and lo-and-behold loads of people's personal details were now on Google.

Whoops.

Fortunately we got it all removed pretty damn quickly and I held my hands up to being the cause of the problem, which I think impressed both the client and the boss as I didn't try and bullshit my way out of it. Yeah, not making that mistake again.

Yeek.

Eep.

How are you getting on with your questions, Grim...?

Bugger. Thankfully, the only thing I've done like that so far was to expose an unfinished version of the company's website to search engine spiders so that as well as the live site being listed, all the half-done experimental layout and content showed up too.

Turns out that some idiot had left a link to this beta version of the site in his post asking for advice a while back. When it came up in a meeting, an external SEO type guy checked to see what links were pointing at the beta, I cringed when I saw the Beex url. Projected on the screen.

Oh, I did them.

Hang on, I'll upload the document.

That's about the size of it. As I said, PHP makes it hiliariously easy to write code that's terribly insecure, but even the most secure code in the world won't help if the person writing it is a numpty.

I'm not a numpty any more.

Some good shit there, mind if I crib some of those if I ever need to do any interviews here?

Also, question 1.5.2 - no way have you left enough room for that answer

Knock yourself out.

10^100, innit?

You just know someone (probably me) would be smarmy enough to try and fit all of the zeroes in that space.

Oh, and on 1.3.4 - is that a "trick" question to see if people think of the simple answer before they think of a complex one?

I'd be happy either way. A lot of questions are like that. I'm just as interested in how people did things than if they got things right.

I really, really don't know PHP. I can get the gist of a fair bit of that, but rarely enough to answer with any conviction. It's the very simple language-specific things holding me back.

What happened to question 6 after 1.1.5?

It's missing. Only one interviewee noticed (or noticed and had the balls to mention it, which is what I wanted).

What have people answered about the Facebook question? And did anyone draw a good pig?

They all said "No", which is interesting.
It doesn't matter if the pig is good.

What were you looking for in the Facebook question?

I'm reasonably sure I'd have answered along the lines of ‘Yes. I believe in judging employees by the quality of their work, not what they're doing at every second during work hours. That said, if it gets in the way of their work, it should certainly not be allowed. Keep your employees happy, and they generally perform better.’ But I could cave into giving you the answer I think you'd want which, for most large companies, is a firm ‘NO!’

Hmm.

Given that I've recently started doing Facebook apps here at work, I would answer "Yes" to that question

That would be my opinion on the matter.
Again, there's no 'wrong' answer though, really.

Have you seen this thingy Grim...? It's supposed to be a sort of automated version of some of what you're trying to do. I've given the demo a go, but we haven't actually used the main app yet.