Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/9magnets/iOS-Developer-and-Designer-Interview-Questions

A small guide to help those looking to hire a developer or designer for iOS work. While tailored for iOS, many questions could be used for Android developers or designers as well. A great self-test if you're looking to keep current or practice for your own interview.
https://github.com/9magnets/iOS-Developer-and-Designer-Interview-Questions

Last synced: 3 months ago
JSON representation

A small guide to help those looking to hire a developer or designer for iOS work. While tailored for iOS, many questions could be used for Android developers or designers as well. A great self-test if you're looking to keep current or practice for your own interview.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# iOS-Developer-and-Designer-Interview-Questions



A small guide to help those looking to hire a developer or designer for iOS work. While tailored for iOS, many questions could be used for Android developers or designers as well. A great self-test if you're looking to keep current or practice for your own interview.



Inspired by the wonderful [Front-end Job Interview Questions](https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions), I've done my best to match their format and have pulled some of their best questions for inclusion here. Pull requests and suggestions to this repository are highly encouraged.



Contributors: Original work by [Cameron Banga](https://twitter.com/cameronbanga). Big thanks to [Joe Pasqualetti](https://joepasq.com) for his significant additions here so far!



## Table of Contents



  1. [General Questions](#general)

  1. [iOS Technologies Questions](#tech)

  1. [Coding Questions](#code)

  1. [Interface Questions](#ui)

  1. [Design Questions](#design)

  1. [App Store Questions](#appstore)

  1. [Fun Questions](#fun)

  1. [Other References](#references)

  1. [License](#license)



#### [[⬆]](#contents) General Questions:



* What did you learn yesterday/this week?

* What excites or interests you about making software?

* Which version control systems are you familiar with?

* Do you have experience working with projects on GitHub?

* Do you contribute to any iOS open source projects on GitHub or a similar site?

* Can you describe your workflow when you work on creating an iOS app?

* Are you familiar with CocoaPods? Can you explain what they are and how they work?

* In general, explain software licensing and how this applies to work we do.

* Describe your general testing practices when building an iOS app.

* How can apps support other languages, date formats and currencies?

* What is Instruments and how is it useful?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) iOS Technologies Questions:



* Explain Handoff, and in general, how it allows iOS and Mac/web apps to communicate?

* What technologies/services are contained inside of iCloud?

* What is an iOS extension? Can you list a few examples of popular/common extensions?

* What is HealthKit?

* What is HomeKit?

* What is Apple Pay? Could you describe a way we could use it in our applications?

* Explain application sandboxing.

* What is VoiceOver? Explain some of the accessibility features included in iOS and how developers can utilize them.

* How does application multitasking work on iOS?

* What features does Game Center offer for iOS games?

* What are iBeacons?

* What is Cocoa/Cocoa Touch?

* Explain in general, what Core Audio, Core Data, and Core Location are, and how they help iOS apps.

* Describe the role of SpriteKit and SceneKit.

* What is Metal?

* What is the responder chain? How does it work?

* What are the different actions that buttons and other controls can respond to?

* What is the role of the application delegate?

* Explain NSUserDefaults. How would you serialize an array to disk?

* How would you store user's credentials?

* Explain Keychain Services.

* Why are caching and compression important on mobile devices?

* Explain ~/Documents, ~/Library, ~/tmp. What directory is ~ on iOS?

* How does AirPlay work? How would you use it (programmatically) to enhance the utility and presentation of an app?

* Give a brief overview of what sensors, IO and communication methods (Wifi, telephony, etc) are available on iOS. How can you make use of these?

* What are the hardware performance differences among the iPad 2 / iPad mini 1-3, iPad Retina, iPad Air 2, iPhone 5, 5s, 6, and 6+. What do these constraints mean for performance intensive apps?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) Coding Questions:



* What does Cocoa Touch include and not include?

* Why do Cocoa Touch classes start with two capital letters?

* What is Swift, what is Objective-C and how do they relate and compare?

* Explain why optionals are useful in Swift.

* Explain `NSError` and how it works (or doesn't) in Swift.

* How does `instancetype` work and how is it useful?

* When is `let` appropriate in Swift? `var`?

* Why and where is the `map` function useful.

* How do you track down bugs? What are your tools of choice?

* You found a bug in Cocoa. What do you do?

* There is a regression in a new distributed version of our app causing crashes. How do you mitigate it? How will you prevent new bugs from reaching customers?

* How are Objective-C classes implemented? Describe how the Objective-C runtime is implemented.

* What security does iOS offer to protect customers and privileged information?

* Our app downloads data and displays it immediately. In accordance with MVC where is the best place to perform the download?

* How does MVC influence the design of a codebase?

* What methods are part of the controller life-cycle? The view life-cycle?

* What design patterns does iOS make use of? What design patterns do you use in your codebase?

* What queues does iOS provide and how can you best utilize them?

* Give a brief description of how `UIScrollView` is implemented. How does it operate with gesture recognizers, multiple touches and the run loops?

* What API would you add or improve on iOS?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) Interface Questions:



* What is the screen resolution of the iPhone 5, 6, 6+. and iPad Air 2?

* What units is the resolution measured in?

* Explain the purpose of Interface Builder, what is a NIB file?

* What image filetype should iOS UI assets be saved in?

* Describe some differences between a Storyboard and a standard NIB file.

* What is the device status bar? How tall is it in points? Is it opaque or transparent? What does it do during a phone call or navigation?

* What is a navigation bar? Can you show me an Apple app on your phone that uses a navigation bar?

* What is a tab bar? What is a toolbar? Compare and contrast them.

* What is a table view? What is a collection view?

* Describe when a popover is most appropriate.

* What is a split-view controller?

* What sort of content would be appropriate to place in a picker view?

* When are a label, text field and text view appropriate?

* What does a segmented control do?

* What is a modal view?

* What kind of notifications does iOS offer?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) Design Questions:



* What is an iOS app icon? Describe it as best as you can.

* What is the smallest size an app icon could be? What's the largest size it could be?

* Can an app icon contain any transparency?

* How does a Newsstand icon differ from a regular app icon?

* Explain a launch image.

* Describe the purpose of Auto Layout, and in general, how it works.

* Describe the role of animation in design of software.

* Describe the role of interactivity and feedback when designing software.

* What are some differences to take into account when building an iPhone app vs an iPad app?

* Describe the importance and role of prototyping when working on an app design.



#### [[⬆]](#contents) App Store Questions:



* How do In-App Purchases work? What can be purchased with IAP?

* Have you ever submitted an app to the App Store? Can you explain the general process?

* What is iTunes Connect?

* What is a provisioning profile?

* What is an App ID?

* What are the differences between Development and Production iOS signing certificates?

* How is TestFlight used? How were UUIDs used in ad-hoc app distribution?

* When do purchase receipts need to be verified?

* What is required to display iAds?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) Fun Questions:



* What's a cool thing you've coded recently? What's something you've built that you're proud of?

* What are some things you like about the developer tools you use?

* Who are some of your favorite independent Mac or iOS developers?

* Do you have any pet projects? What kind?

* What would you change about Xcode?

* What is your favorite iOS API?

* Do you have a pet or favorite bug report?

* What are your favorite ways to investigate a new technology?

* Why are dictionaries called dictionaries? Why not hash tables or hash maps?



#### [[⬆]](#contents) Other References:



* [iOS Dev Weekly](https://iosdevweekly.com)

* [Accidental Tech Podcast](http://atp.fm)

* [Debug Podcast](http://www.imore.com/debug)

* [The Talk Show](https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/)

* [NSHipster](http://nshipster.com)

* [KZBootstrap](https://github.com/krzysztofzablocki/KZBootstrap)

* [WWDC Videos](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/)

* [ASCII WWDC](http://asciiwwdc.com)

* [Pttrns](http://www.pttrns.com)

* [Ray Wenderlich Tutorials](http://www.raywenderlich.com)

* [iOS Version Stats](http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/)

* [iOS Human Interface Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/)

* [Black Pixel blog post on hiring iOS and Mac engineers](http://blackpixel.com/blog/2013/04/interview-questions-for-ios-and-mac-developers-1.html)

* [Macoscope guide to a technical interview](http://macoscope.com/blog/so-you-have-a-technical-interview-at-macoscope/)



#### [[⬆]](#contents) License:



Released under the [MIT License](http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT). See LICENSE file for details.