The question I will definitely ask when I am an interviewer at SitePoint is: What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of PHP code? Because this question can give me a general idea of what type of programmer the candidate is, rather than simply testing his mastery of PHP functions (Zend’s PHP certification is good at this, and Yahoo’s PHP programmer interview questions are also such). Importantly, this question lets me know if the candidate has experienced taking over a piece of messy code from a lazy programmer to reuse, or helping other members of the team with this type of thing.
Admittedly, I don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question myself, but I know what answers I want to hear:
Excellent PHP code should be structured. Large sections of code should be divided into functions or methods, while small sections of code that are inconspicuous should be commented so that their purpose will be clear in the future. And the front-end code such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. should be separated from the program as much as possible. PHP's object-oriented programming features can help programmers organize their code in an orderly manner.
Excellent PHP code should be standardized. Whether it's setting naming rules for variable and function names, standardizing reusable processes such as database operations and error handling, or as simple as specifying how code should be indented, these standardizations can make the code more readable. Readability is greatly improved.
Good PHP code should be adaptive. PHP has many features such as magic quotes and short tags. Turning these features on and off will affect the running of the program. So, a good programmer should include appropriate statements in his code to enable the program to adapt to the environment.
Good PHP code should be safe. Although PHP is an efficient and flexible language with no fixed framework, it leaves security issues to programmers. A deep understanding of potential security vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), code injection vulnerabilities, character encoding loop vulnerabilities, etc., is crucial for today's professional programmers.
When a candidate answers these questions, I will know clearly whether I should hire him or her. Of course, sometimes programmers can't articulate the problem well, and we ask them to do some PHP testing. Many of the questions in the test may seem simple on the surface, but they also give candidates a chance to express themselves, because if you look carefully, you can spot the problems.
The following small piece of "poor" PHP code is a simplified test question. This question is like asking: How should you optimize this code?
![[Web front-end] Node.js quick start](https://img.php.cn/upload/course/000/000/067/662b5d34ba7c0227.png)
