Interview question(s) about concepts you don't interact with often, if at all

Jason — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 03:11:41 +0000

TLDR: How do you answer a question in the interview where you've never found a use for the thing being asked about, so you never learned it?

I'm interested how others have handled this situation in a technical interview.

What do you say when asked about a specific technology/concept/keyword during a technical interview that you have never used so therefore you can't speak on it? Keep in mind, it probably wasn't listed in the job requirements either.

For example, I was asked

'What is the difference between var and dynamic?' (this is c# btw)

Honestly I didn't know. I use var all the time, but not dynamic. As I looked it up later, with the definition being

With var the type is set at compile time where as dynamic, type is set at run time.

That lead me to think

'Is dynamic something I'm missing out on? How have I gotten so far without ever using it?'

Further reading seems to indicate that

dynamic was primarily a way to allow C# to interop with languages such as Python, which is not statically typed

Ok, so I personally haven't done this, but this lead me to wonder

'Does this job do this often and that is why they asked?'.

Now, when I get asked this type of question I tend to answer it to the best of my abilities, and I now reply with

'Interesting question, I haven't found a use case for that. Can you explain when and how you've used this here?'

I'm not even being sarcastic, I honestly would like to know in what scenario they have used dynamic enough to warrant asking this. There is a limited amount of time in an interview to judge a candidate, why did you choose this concept?

Is it that important?

I've been asked the same question but with different technologies/concepts/keywords like 'Explain Delegates'. I know that a delegate is passing a function as a parameter, but I don't think I've ever typed

public delegate void MyDelegate(string msg);

Does it have its uses, I think so but I've never used it and yet

my code compiles
my unit tests run
my work items get closed

So, after my long ramble, I would like to ask you dear reader?

How do you answer questions like this, when you haven't used the specific concept at all?

DEV Community: Jason

Interview question(s) about concepts you don't interact with often, if at all