Job Interview Question

Question

What's your opinion of the following job interview question? In the requirement it never mentions about to have classic ASP experience. But the question is "What are the differences between ADO.NET DataSet and ADO Record Set?".

Answer 1

I'd say it's a fine interview question.

Active Server Pages (ASP) != ActiveX Data Objects (ADO)

Answer 2

Probably they have some legacy code using the pre .NET version of ADO, and are testing to see if you have some knowledge of it.

Answer 3

I think knowing about the differences between ADO and ADO.Net is probably very useful in some positions.

If you've never done any classic ADO then you should probably just say so at the interview and move on to the next question.

Answer 4

Well, they can even ask you whatever they want. About Perl, Python and Ruby, it is an Interview, they might be measuring your knowledge in other languages (if you heard about them, or if you know why .NET is better/worst).

The important thing in an interview is that you answer the questions to the best of your abilities, so what's my opinion, if you don't know then just say you don't know about ADO Record Set, but you list the benefits/features of a .NET DataSet

Answer 5

The best thing I've found in an interview if you don't know the answer to something is not sit quietly and then try and blag it. Be up front, say you don't know, but if you'd hazzard a guess then it would be insert educated guess here. The interviewer will appriciate the honesty, not everyone knows everything. People want to see confidence but also humility :-)

Answer 6

Of course if you work for a big corporate firm, they are more likely to just build their own DAL from scratch and use stored procedures instead of..........well, this.

Answer 7

Some people ask what they know - and if you know it too maybe they like you :)

Answer 8

I'm not an asp programmer, but since you've asked for opinions, here's one from Joel

Just for fun, here is the worst interview question on Earth: "What's the difference between varchar and varchar2 in Oracle 8i?" This is a terrible question. There is no possible, imaginable correlation between people that know that particular piece of useless trivia and people that Fog Creek wants to hire. Who cares what the difference is? You can find out online in about 15 seconds!

Answer 9

I'd say it's fairly pointless these days. Anyone who doesn't know probably just hasn't worked with old applications. All the ADO functionality has been out of date for about a decade now and there are some fine devs with years of experience that will just never have seen ADO.

I've hired a lot, and the difference between the really excellent candidates and the average ones is not what obscure things they know now, but what they can go pick up quickly when they need to.

In short a really good developer might answer this with: "I've never worked with ADO, but I could go find out", which isn't that useful for you as interviewer.

A more useful question would be

In what circumstances is it better to use a DataSet rather than iterate the rows of a table?

That way you get the important stuff - actual usage and technology application. They could answer in the context of Linq or a SqlDataReader or any other tech that they've worked with. What you get is what they understand and know how to use, not what they could Google in a few seconds anyway.

Answer 10

This is my favourite answer to these questions:

I'm sorry I don't know that; but give me 5mins and Google I'll find out for you.

Answer 11

Awful question if their goal is to test your capability as an engineer.

Reasonable question if your resume claimed you are both an ASP and ASP.NET guru, and they just want to see if you're telling the truth.

Answer 12

I've asked a similar question at an interview although it was probably a bit more high level. I asked the candidate what he liked better about Java and what he liked better about C++. This was not some sort of "standard question" The candidate in question, in his resume and the interview up to then stated experience with both. I asked the question for two reasons. To check that the candidate actually has the knowledge he states (which could be a valid reason for the question on the ADO data/record sets). The second reason is to have the candidate show a degree of reflection and ownership of his tools.

In short, the appropriateness of the question is dependent on the profile of the candidate. If the candidate stated knowledge of both, let the candidate show his understanding. If this knowledge is critical to the job, same.

Answer 13

And the answer is: "Thank you for your time. I don't want to work here."