James:
IN GENERAL
In general, James's level of knowledge in nearly all of the sections was expert. HE was an exceptional candidate and he would easily fit in with any senior team. He was clearly interested, experienced and very well read around his subject. When choosing teams, it would be worth considering putting James in with some of the less experienced members as not only was he expert in the important areas, but he also was able to explain relevant concepts in a clear and instructive way.
JAVA & OBJECT ORIENTED PRINCIPLES
James excelled in all of the areas covered here, even getting the difficult question (about the persistence of singletons) correct. He has used many relevant frameworks including spring and hibernate, he mentioned cross cutting concerns, and was able to explain clearly several design patterns and the characteristics of many of the frameworks he has used. His knowledge here was expert.
JAVASCRIPT
He has 1.5 years experience intensively using Javascript, but it was from some time ago: 2008. This fits the "old fashioned" category of Javascript knowledge which puts him in an excellent position for the course. He has done no server side development in Javascript.
BASIC TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (TDD)
He was aware of the this and has used it. He was aware of the terminology used and what it means. He knows red-green-refactor and had incorporated TDD into one of the teams he worked with in a pragmatic way that he was able to eloquently describe. Hi knowledge here was excellent.
AGILE METHODOLOGY
He got the agile question on the pre screening wrong but further questioning revealed he didn't fully understand the question i.e. "which BEST describes agile" (all of the answers could fit into agile). In hindsight he changed his answer to the correct one. He actually has significant expertise in agile. He understands all of the ceremonies, the Moscow method, story pointing and all of the relevant characteristics of agile. He is a qualified scrum master, understands MVP and has a very detailed expert knowledge.
RESTFUL WEB SERVICES
He uses this "all the time". His recent contract involved upgrading legacy solutions by abstracting the legacy software using REST. In addition to his excellent knowledge of REST (he was aware of the verbs and end points etc) eh mentioned micro-services. Micro-services are used extensively at HMRC and DWP, his background in this will serve him very well indeed.
SOURCE CONTROL MANAGEMENT
He uses GIT on a regular basis and was very familiar with the concepts and commands and how they differ from previous types of source control management like SVN. Excellent.
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION (JENKINS OR EQUIVALENT TOOL)
He has used Cruise Control and Jenkins and has written jobs in these many times. It's good to have a someone with this much Jenkins experience on the team. Excellent.
BUILD AUTOMATION (ANT, MAVEN, GRADLE)
He was very experienced here. He had clearly used all of the above tools extensively, but was unaware of the philosophy behind maven that can be useful in guiding software development: Convention over configuration. This shouldn't represent a problem. His practical knowledge was exceptional.
CSS + HTML5
Css and HTML, but no HTML5. As described in the Javascript section, his Javascript / HTML knowledge falls into the old fashioned category, ideal for the MEAN course.
In general, James's level of knowledge in nearly all of the sections was expert. HE was an exceptional candidate and he would easily fit in with any senior team. He was clearly interested, experienced and very well read around his subject. When choosing teams, it would be worth considering putting James in with some of the less experienced members as not only was he expert in the important areas, but he also was able to explain relevant concepts in a clear and instructive way.
JAVA & OBJECT ORIENTED PRINCIPLES
James excelled in all of the areas covered here, even getting the difficult question (about the persistence of singletons) correct. He has used many relevant frameworks including spring and hibernate, he mentioned cross cutting concerns, and was able to explain clearly several design patterns and the characteristics of many of the frameworks he has used. His knowledge here was expert.
JAVASCRIPT
He has 1.5 years experience intensively using Javascript, but it was from some time ago: 2008. This fits the "old fashioned" category of Javascript knowledge which puts him in an excellent position for the course. He has done no server side development in Javascript.
BASIC TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (TDD)
He was aware of the this and has used it. He was aware of the terminology used and what it means. He knows red-green-refactor and had incorporated TDD into one of the teams he worked with in a pragmatic way that he was able to eloquently describe. Hi knowledge here was excellent.
AGILE METHODOLOGY
He got the agile question on the pre screening wrong but further questioning revealed he didn't fully understand the question i.e. "which BEST describes agile" (all of the answers could fit into agile). In hindsight he changed his answer to the correct one. He actually has significant expertise in agile. He understands all of the ceremonies, the Moscow method, story pointing and all of the relevant characteristics of agile. He is a qualified scrum master, understands MVP and has a very detailed expert knowledge.
RESTFUL WEB SERVICES
He uses this "all the time". His recent contract involved upgrading legacy solutions by abstracting the legacy software using REST. In addition to his excellent knowledge of REST (he was aware of the verbs and end points etc) eh mentioned micro-services. Micro-services are used extensively at HMRC and DWP, his background in this will serve him very well indeed.
SOURCE CONTROL MANAGEMENT
He uses GIT on a regular basis and was very familiar with the concepts and commands and how they differ from previous types of source control management like SVN. Excellent.
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION (JENKINS OR EQUIVALENT TOOL)
He has used Cruise Control and Jenkins and has written jobs in these many times. It's good to have a someone with this much Jenkins experience on the team. Excellent.
BUILD AUTOMATION (ANT, MAVEN, GRADLE)
He was very experienced here. He had clearly used all of the above tools extensively, but was unaware of the philosophy behind maven that can be useful in guiding software development: Convention over configuration. This shouldn't represent a problem. His practical knowledge was exceptional.
CSS + HTML5
Css and HTML, but no HTML5. As described in the Javascript section, his Javascript / HTML knowledge falls into the old fashioned category, ideal for the MEAN course.