>Hi,
>
>Does anyone have a good set of VFP technical interview questions they can share? I am conducting some VFP interviews for new hires and it would be nice to have a decent set of "tried and tested" technical questions to sort the "men from the boys" :)
>
>Generally, I would wing this sort of thing but, the same set of questions would seem to be more fair across multiple applicants.
>
>Thanks!

The suggestions about having potential applications write a simple app are right-on. However, we tend to hold that back until we've conducted a phone interview; you can weed a lot of people out on the phone with just a few questions. Or, if they're coming in for the interview, we have 10 written questions we'll give them.

Here's a few of them:

- What's the difference between a Global, Public, Private, and Local variable?
(assuming they can answer this; you'd be surprised how many can't, we follow up with, "If you don't declare a variable in FoxPro, what is it by default?"

- What's the difference between table and row buffering?
Again, if they can answer this, we follow up with, "What is optimistic and pessimistic locking?"

- On the written test, we'll show them a VERY simple SQL query and tell them what type of indexes are available. Then we'll ask if it's optimized or not. If not, how can you optimize it (and, is there any way to get VFP to tell you if it's optimized).

- What's the difference between the default and a private datasession? What is a datasession?

We've got a few more, but honestly, you can filter 90% of the developers that might apply with those - it's pretty sad, especially when they tell you they've been using FoxPro for 8+ years (and obviously stopped learning about it right after 2.5)

If they do OK on the test, the sample app. is a great indicator of their coding style, UI design skills, naming conventions, etc. We'll normally give them a chance to explain their design decisions (eg. Why did you use free tables instead of a database? SCATTER/GATHER instead of buffering, and so on).