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How Many Values Does a Boolean Have? (danilafe.com)
3 points by goranmoomin on Aug 22, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



The point of this sort of question is to check that the candidate knows the basics, but also to see if they can take a hint and think.

In software undefined values are a thing and they can cause a lot of grief, so if the candidate's reply includes that a boolean might have an undefined value in some languages (even if they don't know which ones or if it's even the case), and/or that some languages don't have an actual boolean type and/or have rules on how to evaluate something as 'true' and 'false' I would be very satisfied.

No-one can be expected to know all the languages out there but in the context of such a question they should be able to come up with potential pitfalls that should be investigated as the case may be, that's the level of reasoning I would expect.

My personal experience of technical interviews is that saying that I don't know the specifics but off the top of my head I would want to check x, y, and z is usually well received (unless, of course the question is about something I am expected to know the specifics about because of my experience) because that is key to an engineer's job.




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