Hello people from StackOverflow!
I come to you with yet another question. :)
As stated in some of my previous questions, I'm interested in creating a website that handles jobs and company openings for people to browse. I intend to have a way for people to upload CV's, apply to a position, and have companies post jobs as well.
Since I've never done a project of this scope before, I fear that I may be neglecting certain things that are a must for a web-targeted application.
I realize that is a very broad question, perhaps too broad to even answer. However, I'd really like someone to provide just a little input on this. :)
What things do I need to have in mind when I create a website of this type?
I'm going to be using ASP.Net and C#.
Edit: Just to clarify, the website is going to be local to a country in eastern europe.
Taking on careers.stackoverflow then? :)
One of the biggest things, is not even a technical thing to be thinking about - how are you going to pull in enough users to make the site take off?
It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - if you don't have recruiters on the site, noone's CV will get viewed. If you don't have CVs listed, recruiters won't use the site. So first and foremost, you need to be thinking about how you will build up a community.
the site must have a good, easy to use, user experience. Make it easy for everyone to achieve what they want.
what makes your site stand out from others? why should people use yours instead of another one?
You could start with the free "Job Site Starter Kit":
http://www.asp.net/downloads/starter-kits/job/
* Enables job seekers to post resumes
* Enables job seekers to search for job postings
* Enables employers to enter profile of their company
* Enables employers to post one or more job postings
First you need a community. It doesn't really matter which one, but it would help if you were also a member of this community. Let's take Underwater Basket Weavers. Then find a problem that this community has or something this community needs to share. Almost invariably it involves information exchange but in some cases it may actually be service based. Then focus your efforts on solving or supplementing that issue. For our Underwater Basket Weavers, we may have a need to share techniques on how to weave specific materials, where to get materials. How could they share this information and how could you make it interesting to them?
Know your audience. Learn their issues. Apply yourself to filling that void.
Related
I guess I'm gonna take a lot of heat about this question, and even some down votes but I am really lost here.
I know what SCORM stands for and what is it good for. I saw the paid "engines" like scorm.com but it starts from $20K...
I work for an LMS site software, we have videos, courses and whatever... my manager said "we have a provider that has a lot of courses in SCORM format, build a tool that import them into our database."
Oh god, help me, is there an easy way to do that or am I facing a year of hard, not satisfying work now? (don't know if I can use the non-free ones, depends on prices).
ASP.NET, C# platform.
Short answer: buy the Rustici guys' engine. If "a lot of courses" is let's say 500, you're looking at $40 per course. You'll probably sell them for more. Or think of it as 3 months work paid instead of 12-20 months of your own work and suffering. Like taking a train instead of walking.
Long answer. I think a lot of people here assumed you want to import SCORM courses and have them work flawlessly. I'm not sure that's what your boss wants you to do. Maybe if you simply import the courses (upload and extract zip files), determine the launcher file (described in easily parseable imsmanifest.xml) and launch it in a popup/iframe, the course will.. just work.
Sure, you will not be able to receive scores and completions. Sure, if the course relies on some data from LMS like student name, you won't be able to supply it.Sure, if the course cannot detect SCORM API, it'll throw an error at you. But you might be able to code a very basic fake API that does nothing or some basic communication functions with your own platform, and you'll be able to launch all those courses. Maybe you don't need 90% of what SCORM offers/requires.
Someone mentioned climbing Mt.Everest. Well, think of it as photoshopping your happy sun burnt face onto a picture of the summit. Not quite the same result but the effort invested is a million times smaller as well.
I wrote an LMS using ASP.net. It took three of us over a year to write the scorm engine and player. It is basic and it was not easy. Tell your boss he just asked you to climb Everest without cold weather gear :)
$20K vs 1 or 2 guys salary for 2 years - if they can read fast or have prior experience with SCORM 1.2 and or 2004. Then all the pain and suffering in between. Rustici has all this figured out and it also works pretty quick compared to other canned systems.
Beyond the API, and XML Parsing, validation, access, sequencing rules, arbitrary limits, error codes and messages, your also deciding on a API implementation. There are LMS systems out there that literally talk to the backend on every GetValue/SetValue call, which seriously lags out the user experience. If I spent that much time building this, only to find out I did it the slowest possible way I think I'd be curled up in the corner somewhere rocking back and forth.
I would say though this space is filled with a ton of legacy code stretching back to the early 2000's that's drastically due for a overhaul. Any code you manage to beg borrow or steal is going to be some old school stuff. None of it tied into a 'managed code' format or anything you could unit test without building that all from scratch too.
Nope, no easy solution here, especially for C#. The commercial solutions cost that much because their developers went through the pain of "a year of hard, not satisfying work". The open-source solutions are typically PHP-based. A few use Java.
ORGINAL SPEAL
Ok so im kind of in a pickle and maybe I can get some clarification and advice here. Im not much familiar with C# but I have done something similar in a Groovy/Grails web application.
So my issue. I have two objects. One is a Shipper(holds basic info on a shipping company). The other is a Vehicle object(Holds information about shipping vehicles). Now a Shipper can have numbers types of shipping vehicles. These are going to be populated in a local sql database in visual studio 2010. I was going to put all this information into one shipper object and one shipper table. Instead I am going the route of making the two different objects. My issue is bringing them back together from the db and linking them into one joined object. What I have done in a Groovy/Grails web application (with help) was Map two objects, A user and a role which came from 2 different tables, together off an id (I'm don't know if I fully understand this but I'm working with it - There was a lot of hand holding)
So in C#. I was looking at mapping and I'm not sure if this is needed or how to go about it. Taking Shipper + Vehicle and making a Shipper/Vehicle object. My lack of understanding in the subject I think makes these seem really trivial.
Or would this be something that I would need an collection for? Making a collection of these two objects.
So maybe a clarification on the two when it comes to C# or at least a Simplified explanation of the two and maybe some basic implementations of each.
I don't need anything too extensive. Im having some crazy coders block on this one for some reason (Might be the copious amounts of red bull and coffee).
Again I lack a lot of knowledge on these datatypes and c# in general.
Ill be monitoring this and updating as I personally progress or more questions/flaming arise. I just need opinions and help to get past this blocker.
EDIT/NEW SPEAL
Ok. So since I don't even know where to start. And given the information above.
I do not understand the difference between Collections and Mapping in C#(or any language at that matter) even after looking up the two. They seem similar to me.
so NEW QUESTION: In this situation, would you use a Map or a Collection. A "Why" would be nice but not needed I guess if thats asking too much.
If I can get that answered then I will be happen and try to go figure it out. I just don't wanna go down a rabbit hole that went the wrong way. I understand the hate of asking a question without showing what iv done. But I have not got that far because of this underlying question. Sorry for the "ignorance" but I would really like to understand which path to at least start down in this situation. I wasn't asking for "hey code this for me". Examples would surely help but a decent explanation would of been nice at least. But I guess ill just ask a yes/no, do this/that question and Ill take it from there.
-Sorry?
I'm in the middle of learning my C#, so I don't understand what you mean by the Map datastructure. Here's a very informative site regarding collections that will tell you about how to use each datastructure:
http://csharp.net-informations.com/collection/csharp-collection-tutorial.htm
If I knew what you mean by Map, I might be able to help you further.
I am new in memchached concept. I search everywhere but i couldn't find anything how to implement in ASP.net 4.0. Can anyone tell me about the right concept.
I successfully installed memchached Server in services.msc
Now what to do after this step.
can any one have good example in Asp.net. If yes, Please provide me.
OR Please tell me step by step code.
I also read these article
http://rsuharta.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/memcached-provider-in-the-net-web-application/
But didn't understand anything. Please provide me best solution
Thanks.
Here is a CodeProject article walking you through using memcached in an ASP.NET application.
However, let me first say that it's awful likely that if you don't already understand the concept of a framework like memcached you don't need it.
Let me try and make this as clear as possible so you can make the right decision. For some reason, as of late, data caching has become the new "golden hammer" and all kinds of frameworks have popped up. But the problem is that most developers don't understand the real driving forces behind implementing data caching and they don't understand that it's really not a trivial matter. I'm going to give you the same example I gave someone else just yesterday on SO, but a paraphrased version.
Imagine if you will an application stack (i.e. more than one application) that accesses a shared set of data at a rate of more than, and I'm going to give you the real number, 40M+ transactions per day. Now, when I use the term transaction here I really mean read or write. Which only complicates things BTW because now I have to optimize for both.
Alright, so now we have a set of applications accessing this shared data at a ridiculous rate per day - how do we ensure reasonable response times for both read and write? Data caching. But, if you're not sitting in that boat you probably don't need data caching and need to spend your time learning other things that are more relevant to what you're doing.
I'm working on a project for normalizing URL's.(i.e different URL's that map to the same web page should be identified and redundancy should be reduced as like a search engine).
So I'd like a dataset containing different URL's in order to test my method. Please provide links for normalization dataset(s).
I'm implementing this project in C# and I'd like your suggestions. Thanks in advance.
Since you asked I'd like your suggestions, leaving your question very open and thus open to which kind of suggestion you might get, I will go ahead and give you my suggestions. Though I admit I am not 100% sure what problem you wish to tackle? Are you asking for a program/code specific suggestion? A strategy for how to setup such a project? or do you wish to collect inspirations/idea's and improve your existing workflow? If you are seeking this third thing, I would suggest to take a look into two scenarios, inspired by a lecture that one of my Artificial Intelligence teachers once gave. Lets dive for a moment to how Ant colonies organise themselves:
top-down approach: a fantasy Imagine a queen in an antcology prescribing for each and every ant their routes to the sub colonies and thereby normalising multiple trace routes that varous ants all undertake to go to the same place, then it seems you want to group the ants together and let each group use just 1 route to their goals, and remove possible duplicate routes. This is one way how to make their routes more efficient. In reality ants actually work differently :
bottom-up approach: the reality:
A single ant has little meaning, but when a whole ant colony is studies, an organisation reveals. Thi sis because the ants themselves follow the scent traces of other ants, that way following eachother and ultimately finding their way to the nest. This way, the cleverness does not need to come from above/from a central database, but a tiny bit of intelligence built in each ant will make the same path re-useable. >> In this way you might want to think building your normalisation technique within each hyperlink that needs to be normalized.
I hope this can give you the suggestions you wished, otherwise if your question was not strategy based but specific code-problem related, ask question with program code in it, that is often much easier to solve than finding the best strategy. Good luck! My 2 cents.
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We're hiring a .NET developer soon, and I was assigned to create a test, which would take aprox: 1h to solve. A test which would test the programmers knowledge in (mainly) C# and ASP.NET.
This is what i've come up with so far:
Use project #1 to read data(HTML) from the specified URL and output all links(anchors) containing anchor name “xxxxxxxxx”. You are free to use 3rd party libraries. My main thought here was to test how the developer would go about solving the problem. For example:
Create a regex which would parse all the data needed.
Create a DOM-tree and use XPATH to find all anchor nodes.
Iterate the whole string and perform manual string compares.
Create a new solution where you demonstrate the usage of .NET masterpages.
Connect the solution to the ******** database. And output all customers from the “********_customers” table.
Create a new button which refreshes all users using AJAX.
Pretty basic stuff. Though, I also added the one below. Mainly to test the developers OO knowledge. Do you think this is too "overkill", or what kind of test would you suggest? If you were to hire a ASP.NET developer, what would your main focus be? ADO.NET? IO? string handling?
Create an interface/abstract class implementation demonstrating the functionallity of either the Factory, Factory Method, Command or Decorator pattern. You wont need to implement any functionallity, just use comments in your abstract class.
Thanks in advance!
The task you gave is essentially a day or two worth of coding if you want to have reasonably readable code. Within an hour I guess I would do it, but you'd have to read code that has cryptically named methods, unreadable regexes, weird callbacks, no error handling and overall is pretty darn ugly. Looking at it you would not hire me.
Before you give your question to candidates, first make sure that your peers/programmers can do it first. And that you can code it in less than 60 minutes in a way that would satisfy you.
That said, I do not know if test is the best choice for hiring anyone. A few interviewing bloggers wrote about their experience coming from conducting tons of interviews:
Guerilla Guide to Interviewing by Joel Spolksy
Truth about interviewing, Get that job at Google (and many others) by Steve Yegge
I totally agree with them. Having conducted about a gazillion of interviews myself, I find that asking basic technology related questions is not nearly as good as asking to implement a bit of recursion or pointers (if someone claims to know C/C++).
By hiring someone who understands recursion/algorithms you get a smart guy who can learn new technology. When you hire someone who knows how to connect to a database, who knows how to connect to a database but not necessarily qualified to do much more than that.
There are a few sources of good programming questions that are somewhere between coding and algorithms that may inspire you. They do not test .NET at all, but are very good indicator of smart programmers.
Top Coder
Google Code jam
Within 1 hour you can only test his programming skills, but it's not enough to write the code sample.
Take a look at this C# / ASP.NET MVC test:
http://tests4geeks.com/test/asp-net-mvc-c-sharp
After the applicant will pass the test and result will be good, then invite him to the interview and talk about his experience. Ask about most difficult features, that he implemented in his projects. In other words, you must understand, if he know and can do enough to take part in your project.
If you still want to ask him to write some code. That is some idea:
There are the students and subjects. Please ask to write 3 pages (asp .net mvc or web-forms). First and second - for editing the dictionary of students and subjects. Third form must contain be the table. The students are in left column. The subjects are in the top row. The marks are at the intersection. Each mark can be edited (text box) and saved. Saving could be implemented by clicking the common button "Save". Or it could save each cell automatically using the Ajax.
This is very simple example, but it would show you how user writes the code, what techniques does he use.
I would have thought that it would be better to simply create a test that would make it easy for you to put developers into different 'skill buckets'.
Why not have three or four sections or features that the developer must 'layer' features on top one another to show their programming and design skills.
Part 1: Implement x easy difficulty
features.
Part 2: Implement x medium difficulty
features.
Part 3: Implement x difficult
features.
Part 4: Implement x very difficult features.
And give the developer 1 hour to write the application. Make it realistic that they can implement the features in the given time frame.
As Joel and Jeff say on the Stackoverflow podcast, there is a direct correlation between developer skill and speed.
Think about the way exams are structured? We can all get 100% of the questions correct in any exam we sit if we had infinite time, but in 1 hour?
This way, If a developer takes your test and only implements features up to Section 2 in the time period, then you should have a safe indication that they are not suitable for the job. Section 3 features all done then they are good enough and section 4 complete would indicate that they are very experienced and a slight cut above the rest.
However I would also look at the overall polish that the developer has given to the code. If they implemented all features up to section 4, but poorly, then they are also not going to be someone you want. IF a developer only did up to section 3 but implemented everything very elegantly, then I would want to hire them.
I also think that 1 hour is perhaps a little too long. I would aim for 10-40 minutes obviously you may need to cut out section 4 that I proposed.
You should check
GeekInterview -- a good source for interview questions
There are hundreds of questions.
I think you would be much better off coming up with a single question that will allow you to see more than just development skills using your target technologies. Strong problem solving skills are as important as expertise in a specific technology stack.
I would even recommend that you explore the two aspects of a candidate in different parts of the process. I usually ask a bunch of questions about the technology stack we are using on our project to gauge the candidates level of knowledge as it relates to that stack.
Then I ask them a pure problem solving question and I allow them to use whichever technology they are most comfortable with to solve the problem (their choice of technology can be an important indicator).
I particularly like Graph Theory related problems. The candidates solutions will tell you a ton about how they approach, solve problems as well as how they validate their solutions.
As part of the problem solving portion of the interview you should be looking for:
Proper data structure design
Implementation of OO best practices
Proper solution (can they debug problems effectively... one great way to see this is do not allow them to use a computer, make them code on a whiteboard and debug in their heads)
Proper solution validation (do they come up with test cases)
My 2 cents:
We have a programming test in my company that is easy. Basically, you have to implement the listener pattern extending the ArrayList class, create unit tests for it (based on at least what we require), document the corner cases, document the program itself if you want to, and then send the test back to us.
A developer has 48 hours to complete that test. We ask for production quality in the test. We want to test the following items:
Was the developer smart enough to cover the corner cases?
Is the developer implementation of multi-threading satisfactory?
Are the unit tests good enough? Do they cover enough cases?
Is the code well written and documented? Will someone be able to maintain that code in the future?
Does he care about his code? Did he explain why he did "A" and not "B"?
I don't think short tests are capable of evaluating a developer. You may ask for a tool or technology that someone have not been using in the past months, and whoever is being tested for that technology will need sometime to get up to speed - but if a developer was working with that the day before, he will know by memory how to use it, and he/ she will seem smarter than the other developer, what may not be true.
But if you ask for something that is tricky and you are interviewing the developer, you can check how he is going to solve the problem - I don't think it really matters if he/ she cannot get the 100% right answer, as long as he/ she can talk about the problems that you found on the code and show that they actually understand whatever you explained to them.
In the past we have used problems from Google code jam. the problems in the early rounds are easier and they get gradually harder. They are kind of algorithmic in nature, you can solve them in whatever language you like. As they get harder there is often an obvious 'brute force' kind of answer that won't work because of the size of the data. So you have to think of something more optimal.
The first test you suggested should take 10min-40min for a basic dev - I would use a web-crawler I have in my library that converts HTML to XML then easily use Linq to XML.
I would test for lambda expressions, performance patterns maintain files, or writing an object to several files dynamically.
Maybe you would like to test unmanged code, pointers etc.
I donno, im just writing-jabbering while things are comin up to my mind, i wrote things that was hard for me to implement.
few days ago I was invited to pass C# programming test at skillbox website there was 30 questions quiz and 45 time to pass it. Below is some of them:
1) What will be printed by running the program?
#if DEBUG
Console.WriteLine("DEBUG");
#else
Console.WriteLine("RELEASE");
#endif
2) What will be the result of calling SomeMethod():
public static void SomeMethod()
{
string s1 = "a";
string s2 = "b";
Swap(ref s1, ref s2);
Console.WriteLine(s1);
Console.WriteLine(s2);
}
public static void Swap(ref Object a, ref Object b)
{
Object t = b;
b = a;
a = t;
}
Here is a link for reference, I think you can find more C# quezzes there http://skillbox.io