Is the question "What is the using statement" a bad question to ask an interviewee? [closed]

Question

We're looking to hire a new junior C# developer. We're not looking for guru's or anything, so my boss asked me to write down a few questions and answers of varying difficulty to assess their skills.

My first question was "What does the using statement do".

So far after 2 interviews (both fresh out of college I think) both answered "used for including a namespace". After telling them not to confuse it with the using directive neither could explain what it does.

To me this seemed a fairly easy question for someone who has worked with C#. Am I wrong and is it a bad/confusing question?

Answer 1

It's not a bad/confusing question; it's basic language knowledge that's important for proper resource management. You've just found a few green interviewees who never learned about it in college.

Answer 2

Remember, your job is to identify a talented guy, not someone who remembers the syntax of the language because they were taught to do so.

When you ask this question, chances are, your prospects have seen and used using statement before, however, were confused by the words statement and directive.

I am not a junior in any way, and first thing that popped in my mind when I read your question was the exactly that - the directive just because how much more prevalent the use of it is compared to the statement.

Another very important aspect, is you want a person who can think logically and learn code as they go - one way to gauge that is to show them the code samples - if the person is a good programmer, they will be able to understand what the statement does even without knowing the statement function in the beginning most of the time. Do the same to someone who learned the syntax religiously without understanding it and you might be up to a nasty surprise.

I would rather provide a prospect with code sample, and ask to describe what the statement does because in the end of the day, programmer will be looking at code 70% of the time. This way you eliminate confusion based on "interview fear" and might hire a talented person.

Answer 3

I don't find it surprising at all. I'm a relatively fresh into the workforce developer, and I've been using C# at work for about a year. I've been using it for personal projects in the same time. I've written several apps, and several web-apps. I just had to look up the using statement to answer your question.

I've seen it in examples online, and it's obvious what it does when I see it, but I've never had occasion to use it in my code, and I wouldn't have been able to answer your question.

As I said, it's pretty obvious what it does. I looked up this article, and skimmed to this example:

using (TextWriter w = File.CreateText("log.txt"))
{
    w.WriteLine("This is line one");
}

source: Understanding the 'using' statement in C#

I still have never read or formally learned anything about a using statement, but I would guess from the example that the scope of the object is that code section, and it is deleted when the section elapses. If you show them something, and they're competent, they will have no trouble working with it. However, just asking what a using statement is is not a useful question, in my opinion.