I was talking to Gavin Estey on iChat about the problems inherent in interviewing a new programmer. The cost of screwing up can be enormous. How do you find out whether the candidate is for real? How do you do it quickly?

Well, those are sticky questions, and there’s a discussion of Perl certification and standards coming up once I’ve marshalled my thoughts properly.

Anyway, Gavin showed me one of the quiz questions they used in his organization:

What’s wrong with the following code?

open FILE, "<$filename";
print FILE '$parameter1, ';
print FILE '$parameter2, ';
print FILE '$parameter3\n';
close FILE;

A good time was had by all

This was my first OSCON, I’ve usually been unable to make it over, due either to lack of time, finances, or both. This time there was a lack of finances and plenty of time, so we threw caution to the wind and headed off to sunny Portland.