A little pre-interview help. Please.

[juicedus]

I have a phone interview this week and possible an in office interview if it goes well. My buddy who works at the company says I'll be fine as long as I review object oriented programming concepts. I'm just wondering if anyone has had an interview dealing with this and could let me know how in-depth I should review. I have taken a course in OOP but it was a couple years ago so I just started reviewing the main concepts like object, message, class, inheritance, interface, abstraction, encapsulation, and polymorphism. Any advice is greatly appreciated

Thanks,
Juice

 

[jsw]

I have no idea how they'll interview you or for what level position you're applying, but I have some broad advice.

(1) They will always be able to ask you questions outside your area of knowledge simply because there are so MANY different ways of saying the same thing within the programming world... many many acronyms and phrases, few actual distinct concepts. Feel free to say that you are very likely aware of the concept they mentioned but perhaps under a different name - it's Ok to ask them to start defining a term, then pick up on it once you know what they're talking about.

(2) The OO terms you mentioned? Yeah, those you should definitely be able to define.

(3) Many good interviewers will ask you how you'd approach a problem, which is your chance to shine. BAD interviewers will ask you to define a lot of terms. HORRIBLE interviewers will ask you about subtle language specifics. I mean, it's OK for anyone to ask enough specifics to see that you're not BSing them, but no one has a language spec hardwired in their head, so I would hope they don't grill you on specifics, as that means nothing. Review concepts. Details will drain out of your head pre-interview anyway.

(4) Read up a bit on Xtreme Programming (XP). I think it's mostly crap, but a lot of places claim to use it.

Mainly, I think you should try to steer the interview towards asking what sorts of problems you'd need to solve and how you'd go about doing that. A carpenter from Russia might not know the English words for all the tools, but he can still build the house. Show them your abilities, don't let them dwell on phrases.

Best of luck!

 

[floyde]

When I was looking for a job I was asked to define polymorphism a lot. I guess it's because it is one of the most abstract concepts of OO. Don't memorize the definition though, what you need to do is understand all of these concepts well enough to use them on a real life scenario.
IMHO a good way to practice is to try to imagine an application you want to build. Think about how you would use OO concepts to build that application and also think about the benefits that would result from using them. If you can integrate all of these concepts into a real life problem, then you are off to a good start.
jsw gave you some very good points as well.
good luck