Software Development Engineer Interview Questions & Answers

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JavaScript is a general-purpose programming language designed to let programmers of all skill levels control the behavior of software objects. The language is used most widely today in Web browsers whose software objects tend to represent a variety of HTML elements in a document and the document itself. But the language can be--and is--used with other kinds of objects in other environments. For example, Adobe Acrobat Forms uses JavaScript as its underlying scripting language to glue together objects that are unique to the forms generated by Adobe Acrobat. Therefore, it is important to distinguish JavaScript, the language, from the objects it can communicate with in any particular environment. When used for Web documents, the scripts go directly inside the HTML documents and are downloaded to the browser with the rest of the HTML tags and content.

JavaScript is a platform-independent, event-driven, interpreted client-side scripting and programming language developed by Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun Microsystems.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a technical specification that allows HTML document authors to attach formatting style sheets to HTML documents. When HTML documents are viewed as Web pages through Web browsers, the attached style sheets will alter the default style sheets embedded in browsers.

One of the fundamental features of CSS is that style sheets cascade; authors can attach a preferred style sheet, while the reader may have a personal style sheet to adjust for human or technological handicaps. The rules for resolving conflicts between different style sheets are defined in CSS specification.

CSS specification is maintained by W3C. You can download a copy of the specification at http://www.w3.org/.
Tutorials below are based Cascading Style Sheets, level 1, which has been widely accepted as the current standard.

Google is making a huge investment in developing the Ajax approach. All of the major products Google has introduced over the last year - Orkut, Gmail, the latest beta version of Google Groups, Google Suggest, and Google Maps - are Ajax applications. (For more on the technical nuts and bolts of these Ajax implementations, check out these excellent analyses of Gmail, Google Suggest, and Google Maps.) Others are following suit: many of the features that people love in Flickr depend on Ajax, search engine applies similar techniques.
These projects demonstrate that Ajax is not only technically sound, but also practical for real-world applications. This isn't another technology that only works in a laboratory. And Ajax applications can be any size, from the very simple, single-function Google Suggest to the very complex and sophisticated Google Maps.
At Adaptive Path, we've been doing our own work with Ajax over the last several months, and we're realizing we've only scratched the surface of the rich interaction and responsiveness that Ajax applications can provide. Ajax is an important development for Web applications, and its importance is only going to grow. And because there are so many developers out there who already know how to use these technologies, we expect to see many more organizations following Google's lead in reaping the competitive advantage Ajax provides.

Find a developer that has experience similar in size to the project you're putting together. Developers with high traffic, large scale site expertise may offer skills that smaller-sized developers don't, such as fine tuning apache or optimizing heavily hit SQL queries. On the other hand, developers who typically build smaller sites may have an eye for things that large scale developers don't, such as offering a greater level of visual creativity.

HTML ( Hyper Text Markup Language) is the language used to write Web pages. You are looking at a Web page right now.
You can view HTML pages in two ways:
► One view is their appearance on a Web browser, just like this page -- colors, different text sizes, graphics.
► The other view is called "HTML Code" -- this is the code that tells the browser what to do.

AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a newly coined term for two powerful browser features that have been around for years, but were overlooked by many web developers until recently when applications such as Gmail, Google Suggest, and Google Maps hit the streets.

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or Ajax (pronounced "Aye-Jacks"), is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of: XHTML (or HTML) and CSS for marking up and styling information. (XML is commonly used, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML).

There is a right answer to this question: all of them. A competent developer should be familiar with testing cross-browser compatibility by using all the major web browsers. Obviously they'll have a primary browser they use for surfing, but their answer to this question might be a good way for you to segue to asking how extensively they test cross-browser issues. Also, if it's some kind of css/html position seeing what toolbars they have installed can be a good metric of their skillset (I personally find the web developer toolbar for firefox to be invaluable).

★ Internet Explorer 5.0 and up,
★ Opera 7.6 and up,
★ Netscape 7.1 and up,
★ Firefox 1.0 and up,
★ Safari 1.2 and up,
★ among others support AJAX.

Whether it's plain old HTML or freakishly advanced ruby on rails, ask for code samples. Source code can say more about a persons work habits than you think. Clean, elegant code can often be indicative of a methodical, capable developer. A resume may say 7+ years of perl experience, but that could mean 7 years of bad, unreadable perl. Also, make sure you ask for a lot of source code, not just a few isolated functions or pieces of HTML. Anyone can clean up 20-30 lines of code for an interview, you want to see the whole shebang. Don't ask for a full, functional app, but make sure it's enough that you can tell it's really what their code is like.

Some might argue that knowing what acronyms actually stand for is trivial, but there are certain acronyms that a developer should have hard-wired into their head ( HTML or CSS, for example). This is the kind of question that might be better reserved for the phone interview to weed out those who are very unqualified.

I've often felt that the more I learn, the less I feel like I know. Solving one mystery opens up ten others. Having the interviewee tell you their faults can reveal a lot about what they know.

Give them some broken code written in the development language they are expected to know for the position. Have them go through it line by line and point out all the mistakes.

Find out what inspires them. While it doesn't necessarily "take one to know one," a great developer should always have a few impressive favorites.

Weed out the old-school table-driven design junkies! Find a developer who uses HTML elements for what they were actually intended. Also, many developers will say they can go table-less, but when actually building sites they still use tables out of habit and/or convenience. Possibly draw up a quick navigation menu or article and have them write the markup for it. To be tricky, you could draw up tabular data - give them bonus points if they point out that a table should be used in that scenario.

A portfolio can say a lot about a developer. Do they have an eye for aesthetics? Are they more creatively or logically oriented? The most important thing is to look for is solid, extensive, COMPLETED projects. A half dozen mockups and/or hacked-out scripts is a sign of inexperience or incompetence.

If they say notepad you've obviously got the wrong person for the job. Not only can this help you gauge their level of competence, but it'll also see if they match the tools everyone else uses in-house.

Standards compliance in web development is where everything is (hopefully?) going. Don't ask them to recite the w3c's mission statement or anything, but they should at least have a general idea of who they are.

Software Requirements are Descriptions and specifications of a system-A requirementis a condition or capability to which the system must conform and Define. A system is designed with certain functionality in mind and to ome up with that functionality and its specification right at the beginning is Requirement Engineering. Requirements Engineering-Eliciting, organizing, and documenting the requirements of the system-The process of establishing the services that the customer requires from a system and the constraints under which it operates and is developed Software requirements should be:
★ Clear
★ complete
★ Unambiguous
★ Quantitative

SRS stands for Software Requirement Specification.
It establishes the basis for agreement between customers and contractors or suppliers on what the software product is expected to do, as well as what it is not expected to do.
Some of the features of SRS are -
★ It sets permits a rigorous assessment of requirements before design can begin.
★ It sets the basis for software design, test, deployment, training etc. It also sets pre-requisite for a good design though it is not enough.
★ It sets basis for software enhancement and maintenance.
★ It sets Basis for Project plans like Scheduling and Estimation.

Functional Requirements are the Expected functionality or services from the system.
Non - Functional Requirements are System property and constraints. Now Constraints can be on requirements itself. Some examples are of Response time, 24X7 availability of the system etc.

The steps involved are Planning Analysis Design coding testing. After testing maintenance of the product in also involved.

This Question is often asked in Microsoft of from any other company who is looking to hire you for testing work. A test case will have 5 section.

IEEE Defines it as The process of testing an integrated hardware and software system to verify that the system meets its specified requirements. It is tested against system specification. May test manual procedures, restart and recovery, user interface, stress, performance. In System Testing, real data is used and sometimes users participation is also used.

Regression Testing accdoing to IEEE is "selective retesting of a system or component to verify that modifications have not caused unintended effects". It is repetition of tests intended to show that the software's behavior is unchanged, except insofar as required. It Can be done at each test level.