A lot of people don’t like interviews; I think this is a shame. They offer great opportunities for fun and learning.
Fun? Well, you are getting the opportunity to talk about the thing you love, programming. And if you don’t love programming, why are you interviewing for a programming job? And when the interviewers ask technical question you get to solve a cool puzzle (assuming the interviewer is good). Plus, you get to brag about your accomplishments, and chat about your experiences. How often do you get to this, except when showing vacation pictures to captive family members?
As for learning, the whole thing is rife with possibilities. When they ask a questions you don’t know the answer too, that just means there is one more cool thing to learn about that is also important to prospective employers. If you can get them to describe it to you, you immediately get to learn about it, and can perhaps impress the interviewers if you grasp the concepts quickly enough.
For example, at my last interview the RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization) idiom was brought up. I feel pretty dumb for not knowing about it, since it is such a simple idea, but I got it pretty quick when it was explained. It is very valuable, and I have read more on it now, and am very glad for it.
Why wouldn’t you get a kick out of getting to do this?
