Interview question

[sophia.agnes]

Hi,

I am fresh college grad. I recently went for interview there i was
asked the following questions

1) what is meant by a web application???
2) can you make a web application in C???

to the first question my answer was an application that can be
accessed via web and that which requires a web server.

then they asked the question how is the communication taking place
between client and server??

to this question i said via protocols, then they said this is not the
answer they expected.

to the second question i said the answer i just don't know.

so what exactly is this web application ???
is it really possible to build a web app in C???

 

[Philip Potter]

Hi,

I am fresh college grad. I recently went for interview there i was
asked the following questions

1) what is meant by a web application???
2) can you make a web application in C???

to the first question my answer was an application that can be
accessed via web and that which requires a web server.

then they asked the question how is the communication taking place
between client and server??

to this question i said via protocols, then they said this is not the
answer they expected.

If this is indeed the question they asked and the question you gave,
then it is a valid (though incomplete) answer.

It's a fairly open-ended question, and it doesn't give any clues as to
how much detail they want and whether they want information about the
nature of the communication medium or about the nature of the data being
sent, though in the context I'd say the data was more interesting to
talk about.

to the second question i said the answer i just don't know.

Probably wise. Better to admit ignorance than feign knowledge. (I have
successfully passed an interview in which I said "I don't know" more
than once.)

so what exactly is this web application ???
> is it really possible to build a web app in C???

I'm unaware of any strict definition of the term, but I would hazard a
guess that it's a program involved in web content. I would include
flash, java applets, and cgi scripts in this definition. CGI can
definitely be written in C.

 

[santosh]

Hi,

I am fresh college grad. I recently went for interview there i was
asked the following questions

1) what is meant by a web application???
2) can you make a web application in C???

to the first question my answer was an application that can be
accessed via web and that which requires a web server.

then they asked the question how is the communication taking place
between client and server??

to this question i said via protocols, then they said this is not the
answer they expected.

No. Communication does take place via various protocols.

to the second question i said the answer i just don't know.

so what exactly is this web application ???
is it really possible to build a web app in C???

It is possible. C places very few restrictions on what can be done with
it. Nevertheless some tasks are easier done in languages specifically
developed for them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application>
<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/it-booch_web/>
<http://www.w3.org/2006/appformats/>
<http://www.webappsec.org/>
<http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/webapp/index.xtp>
<http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page>

 

[Christopher Benson-Manica]

Probably wise. Better to admit ignorance than feign knowledge. (I have
successfully passed an interview in which I said "I don't know" more
than once.)

Likewise; I remember a question where I was asked what the three
characteristics of object-oriented programming were - I remembered two
of inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism, but blanked on the
third. All was well anyway.

I'm unaware of any strict definition of the term, but I would hazard a
guess that it's a program involved in web content. I would include
flash, java applets, and cgi scripts in this definition. CGI can
definitely be written in C.

My first job was maintaining some C-flavored-C++ CGI's, so it indeed
has been done, although these days C is not the best choice for such
work.

 

[Richard]

Probably wise. Better to admit ignorance than feign knowledge. (I have
successfully passed an interview in which I said "I don't know" more
than once.)

Likewise; I remember a question where I was asked what the three
characteristics of object-oriented programming were - I remembered two
of inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism, but blanked on the
third. All was well anyway.

Did they give you any arithmetic tests?

 

[Richard]

Probably wise. Better to admit ignorance than feign knowledge. (I have
successfully passed an interview in which I said "I don't know" more
than once.)

Likewise; I remember a question where I was asked what the three
characteristics of object-oriented programming were - I remembered two
of inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism, but blanked on the
third. All was well anyway.

Did they give you any arithmetic tests?

Ignore that smart assed half joke which wasn't funny because I missed
you're "of" ....

 

[Flash Gordon]

Philip Potter wrote, On 06/11/07 15:24:

(e-mail address removed) wrote:


Probably wise. Better to admit ignorance than feign knowledge. (I have
successfully passed an interview in which I said "I don't know" more
than once.)

I once failed an interview for being too good by answering most
questions with, "I don't know, but I would expect it to be something
like...", or "I've not had to do anything like that, but I would
approach the problem like this..." Obviously I should have just said, "I
don't know" and left it at that to get the job

I'm unaware of any strict definition of the term, but I would hazard a
guess that it's a program involved in web content. I would include
flash, java applets, and cgi scripts in this definition. CGI can
definitely be written in C.

Everything that does not require client side execution can be written in
C with possibly some networking extensions. However I'm seeing other
languages being used more often.

 

[santosh]

Philip Potter wrote, On 06/11/07 15:24:


Everything that does not require client side execution can be written
in C with possibly some networking extensions. However I'm seeing
other languages being used more often.

Even programs requiring client-side execution can be done in C if the
browser provides a C compiler or interpreter plug-in.

Of course it would be a major risk to run a language with pointers and
no protection from a possibly untrusted source...

 

[user923005]

Hi,

I am fresh college grad. I recently went for interview there i was
asked the following questions

1) what is meant by a web application???

I would say an application that interfaces with the world wide web.
Then I would ask them for their definition.

2) can you make a web application in C???

Yes, but it requires implementation defined behavior. There are (for
instance) a large number of web servers written in C. And you can
interface to a Web server using C language libraries. Other web
services such as ping servers, mail servers, etc. can also be written
in C. A quick perusal of SourceForge will reveal plenty of web
services written in C. I would probably use C++ and a toolkit like
ACE unless the project were a simple one.

to the first question my answer was an application that can be
accessed via web and that which requires a web server.

That is too narrow, I think. But I would not call it wrong.

then they asked the question how is the communication taking place
between client and server??

Typically, using TCP/IP. That's probably what they were after.

to this question i said via protocols, then they said this is not the
answer they expected.

And yet it is a correct answer.

to the second question i said the answer i just don't know.

I broadly prefer this kind of answer to someone trying to buffalo
through the interview.

so what exactly is this web application ???

Depends on your definition of web application. What about an NNTP
news server? A web application or not? I would say 'yes.'

is it really possible to build a web app in C???

All things are possible. It's not a bad choice, really. Perhaps not
optimal, but if the company creating the product has a large number of
talented and available C programmers it is probably a very good
choice.