{"id":13507552,"url":"https://github.com/afeld/rails_interview_questions","last_synced_at":"2025-10-05T01:52:37.237Z","repository":{"id":5912866,"uuid":"7132076","full_name":"afeld/rails_interview_questions","owner":"afeld","description":"A list of some baseline Rails interview questions","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2018-05-27T16:17:09.000Z","size":19,"stargazers_count":298,"open_issues_count":1,"forks_count":43,"subscribers_count":18,"default_branch":"master","last_synced_at":"2025-04-08T03:19:53.262Z","etag":null,"topics":[],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":"","language":null,"has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":null,"status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/afeld.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":null,"contributing":null,"funding":null,"license":null,"code_of_conduct":null,"threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":null,"codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null}},"created_at":"2012-12-12T15:10:30.000Z","updated_at":"2025-01-06T17:00:30.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":"2022-07-29T18:19:06.885Z","dependency_job_id":null,"html_url":"https://github.com/afeld/rails_interview_questions","commit_stats":null,"previous_names":[],"tags_count":0,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/afeld/rails_interview_questions","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/afeld%2Frails_interview_questions","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/afeld%2Frails_interview_questions/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/afeld%2Frails_interview_questions/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/afeld%2Frails_interview_questions/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/afeld","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/afeld/rails_interview_questions/tar.gz/refs/heads/master","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/afeld%2Frails_interview_questions/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":278399611,"owners_count":25980331,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2022-07-04T15:15:14.044Z","status":"online","status_checked_at":"2025-10-04T02:00:05.491Z","response_time":63,"last_error":null,"robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":true,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":[],"created_at":"2024-08-01T02:00:36.042Z","updated_at":"2025-10-05T01:52:37.223Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/afeld.png","language":null,"funding_links":[],"categories":["Uncategorized"],"sub_categories":["Uncategorized"],"readme":"# Rails Interview Questions\n\nI get a fair number of questions via [Hacker Hours](http://hackerhours.org) and elsewhere regarding what questions to use/expect in an interview for a Rails developer, so figured I would get it together in a tidy list.  Pull requests welcome.\n\n## Tips\n\n### Interviewers\n\n* Personalize your list of questions.\n* Don't ask questions you don't know the answers to.\n* Mix trivia questions with open-ended ones.\n* Use [Codr](http://codr.io/) or a similar online collaborative text editor for doing coding challenges\n    * Can be seen in real-time by remote team members\n    * The unique URL with the solution can be easily sent around or added wherever you a tracking information about the candidate\n* About a third of the way through the interview, however you're feeling about the candidate (:+1:/:-1:), try and convince yourself otherwise.\n    * This is to help yourself fight your own biases.\n\n### Interviewees\n\n* Don't study to the test.  Not all of these questions will be used, and others will be asked that aren't covered here.  Know your stuff.\n* Rails skills != CS skills\n* Know whether you are interviewing for a full-stack vs. backend-focused position.\n* Have code up on Github/Bitbucket/wherever - the more side projects you have to talk about, the better.\n* Be comfortable with *some* version control system.\n* Community awareness and resourcefulness can be as important as technical knowledge.\n\n## The Questions\n\n### General\n\n* What is a tree?  What is a DAG?\n* Pseudo-code depth-first and breadth-first search.\n* Given a sorted array, what is the fastest way to find a element?  What is the Big-O time to do so?\n* Explain how ajax works, hitting all parts of the stack. ([@abestanway](https://twitter.com/abestanway/status/278967644705677312))\n\n### Ruby\n\n* What is the difference between a lambda, a block and a proc? [I have gotten this one at every Ruby interview I've been in]\n* How do you sort an Array of objects by a particular attribute?  What is a better way to do sorting with ActiveRecord?\n* What are some of your favorite gems?  What are their alternatives?\n* In Ruby, which is generally the better option: a recursive function or an iterative one?\n* What are `#method_missing` and `#send`?  Why are they useful?\n* What are the various Ruby runtimes, and how are they different?\n\n### Rails\n\n* What is the general history of Rails?\n* What is new in Rails 4?\n* Explain the different pieces of Rails.\n* Walk through the flow of a request through Rails.\n* What are the different server options for running a Rails/Rack app?\n* Explain CSRF and how Rails combats it.\n* Explain mass-assignment vulnerability.\n* Why do some people say \"Rails can't scale\"?\n* What is Rack?\n* What is middleware? How does it compare to controller filters/actions?\n* Explain various forms of caching available in Rails.\n* What are some Ruby web server options?\n* How is something like `30.seconds.ago` implemented? (c/o @harrisj)\n* On a scale of \"I've heard of it\" (0) to \"I maintain it\" (10), how would you rate your Rails proficiency? \n\n## Resources\n\n(no particular order)\n\n\n* [@darcyclarke](https://github.com/darcyclarke)'s [Frontend Interview Questions](https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions) (inspiration for this repo)\n* My [Advanced JavaScript](https://github.com/advanced-js/syllabus) class materials\n* [Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPY1uqq1cgk) of the Junior Developer Panel that I hosted\n* [Ruby Koans](http://rubykoans.com/)\n* [Project Euler](https://projecteuler.net/)\n* [Flatiron School Prework](http://prework.flatironschool.com/) and [background](http://blog.flatironschool.com/flatiron-school-prework/)\n* [Job Interview](https://github.com/ruby-jokes/job_interview) by @ruby-jokes\n* [Developer Evangelist Interview Questions](https://github.com/MurtzaM/Developer-Evangelist-Interview-Questions)\n* [Resources](http://hackerhours.org/resources.html) from Hacker Hours\n* [Technical interview cheat sheet](https://gist.github.com/TSiege/cbb0507082bb18ff7e4b)\n\n------------\n\n\u003ca rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/88x31.png\" /\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\u003cspan xmlns:dct=\"http://purl.org/dc/terms/\" href=\"http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text\" property=\"dct:title\" rel=\"dct:type\"\u003eRails Interview Questions\u003c/span\u003e by \u003ca xmlns:cc=\"http://creativecommons.org/ns#\" href=\"https://github.com/afeld/rails_interview_questions\" property=\"cc:attributionName\" rel=\"cc:attributionURL\"\u003eAidan Feldman\u003c/a\u003e is licensed under a \u003ca rel=\"license\" href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US\"\u003eCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License\u003c/a\u003e.\n","project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fafeld%2Frails_interview_questions","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Fafeld%2Frails_interview_questions","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fafeld%2Frails_interview_questions/lists"}