Interview Tips Interview Tips, Interview Questions and Answers

22Mar/120

Financial Calculators: The Abacus of Today

In ancient times, great mathematicians, as well as simple folk, used stones or wooden beads within a structure that formed what they called an abacus. Abaci are used to calculate even complex mathematical equations. Evidence of this financial tool has been found in various forms and locations from ancient Greece to China and Japan.

It has been used to keep records of their purchases, trades, and sales. This method proved to be sufficient for their needs. The abacus laid the foundation on which current calculating devices were built. Imagine having to use this abacus in present day society!

The complexity of today's ever changing economic state demands not only sufficiency, but efficiency, promptness, and accuracy. However, this tool is, indeed, still being used by some. Perhaps used by elderly shop keepers in Japan who, by force of habit, do all their calculating with this strange and wondrous device known as the abacus. Although this might be a comfortable and reliable method for the shop keepers, the art of using such a device is lost to the western world. Visit this page financialcalculator.org to look into the modern way of doing things.

These days, all calculations can be performed with a few buttons. In schools, in homes, and in businesses, the calculator is always within reach. In fact, with today's technology, even our mobile phones can be transformed into calculating devices. Using a calculator is as natural as using a tooth brush. In restaurants, we calculate tips or calculate our bills into portions.

1Jul/100

Where should I use XML

Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and
processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML.
XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability
with both SGML and HTML.
Despite early attempts, browsers never allowed other SGML, only
HTML (although there were plugins), and they allowed it (even encouraged
it) to be corrupted or broken, which held development back for over
a decade by making it impossible to program for it reliably. XML
fixes that by making it compulsory to stick to the rules, and by
making the rules much simpler than SGML.

But XML is not just for Web pages: in fact it’s very rarely used
for Web pages on its own because browsers still don’t provide reliable
support for formatting and transforming it. Common uses for XML
include:
Information identification because you can define your own markup,
you can define meaningful names for all your information items.
Information storage because XML is portable and non-proprietary,
it can be used to store textual information across any platform.
Because it is backed by an international standard, it will remain
accessible and processable as a data format. Information structure

XML can therefore be used to store and identify any kind of (hierarchical)
information structure, especially for long, deep, or complex document
sets or data sources, making it ideal for an information-management
back-end to serving the Web. This is its most common Web application,
with a transformation system to serve it as HTML until such time
as browsers are able to handle XML consistently. Publishing the
original goal of XML as defined in the quotation at the start of
this section. Combining the three previous topics (identity, storage,
structure) means it is possible to get all the benefits of robust
document management and control (with XML) and publish to the Web
(as HTML) as well as to paper (as PDF) and to other formats (eg
Braille, Audio, etc) from a single source document by using the
appropriate stylesheets. Messaging and data transfer XML is also
very heavily used for enclosing or encapsulating information in
order to pass it between different computing systems which would
otherwise be unable to communicate. By providing a lingua franca
for data identity and structure, it provides a common envelope for
inter-process communication (messaging). Web services Building on
all of these, as well as its use in browsers, machine-processable
data can be exchanged between consenting systems, where before it
was only comprehensible by humans (HTML). Weather services, e-commerce
sites, blog newsfeeds, AJaX sites, and thousands of other data-exchange
services use XML for data management and transmission, and the web
browser for display and interaction.

24Jun/100

The Best Questions to Ask in the Interview

Some good topics to cover include: The company Dave Stanford, executive vice president of client services for contingency and contract staffing firm Winter, Wyman Companies suggests asking:

  • What do you see ahead for your company in the next five years?
  • How do you see the future for this industry?
  • What do you consider to be your firm's most important assets?
  • What can you tell me about your new product or plans for growth?
  • How do you rate your competition? The position's history Asking about why the position is vacant can provide insight into the company and the potential for advancement. According to Annie Stevens and Greg Gostanian, managing partners at executive and career development firm ClearRock, good questions include:
  • What happened to the last person who held this job?
  • What were the major strengths and weaknesses of the last person who held this job?
  • What types of skills do you NOT already have onboard that you're looking to fill with a new hire? The department Asking about your department's workers and role in the company can help you understand more about the company's culture and hierarchy. Stanford suggests asking:
  • What is the overall structure of the company and how does your department fit the structure?
  • What are the career paths in this department?
  • What have been the department's successes in the last couple of years?
  • How do you view your group/division/department? The job's responsibilities To avoid any confusion later on, it pays to gain a solid understanding of the position. FGP International's Eddie Payne recommends inquiring:
  • What would you consider to be the most important aspects of this job?
  • What are the skills and attributes you value most for someone being hired for this position?
  • Where have successful employees previously in this position progressed to within the company?
  • Could you describe a typical day or week in this position? The typical client or customer I would be dealing with? The expectations To determine how and when you will evaluated, Payne recommend advises asking:
  • What are the most immediate challenges of the position that need to be addressed in the first three months?
  • What are the performance expectations of this position over the first 12 months?
  • How will I be evaluated at XYZ company, and how often? The next steps At the end of the interview, don't forget to ask:
  • What are the next steps in the interview process?
  • 30May/100

    Whats the difference betweeen Structure, Class and Enumeration

    Structures and Enumerations are Value-Types. This means, the data that they contain is stored as a stack on the memory. Classes are Reference-Types, means they are stored as a heap on the memory.
    Structures are implicitly derived from a class called System.ValueType. The purpose of System.ValueType is to override the virtual methods defined by System.Object. So when the runtime encounters a type derived from System.ValueType, then stack allocation is achieved. When we allocate a structure type, we may also use the new keyword. We may even make a constructor of a structure, but, remember, A No-argument constructor for a structure is not possible. The structure's constructor should always have a parameter.

    So if we define the following structure

    struct MyStruct
    {
    public int y,z;
    }
    and we create a structure type
    MyStruct st = new MyStruct();

    In case of a class, no-argument constructors are possible. Class is defined using the class keyword.

    A struct cannot have an instance field, whereas a class can.

    class A
    {
    int x = 5; //No error
    ...
    }

    struct
    {
    int x = 5; //Syntax Error
    }

    A class can inherit from one class (Multiple inheritance not possible). A Structure cannot inherit from a structure.

    Enum is the keyword used to define an enumeration. An enumeration is a distinct type consisting of a set of named constants called the enumerator list. Every enumeration has an underlying type. The default type is "int". Note: char cant be the underlying data type for enum. First value in enum has value 0, each consequent item is increased by 1.

    enum colors {red, green, blue, yellow};

    Here, red is 0, green is 1, blue is 2 and so on.
    An explicit casting is required to convert an enum value to its underlying type

    int x = (int)colors.yellow;