tomhudson's Journal: From the "so stupid its not even wrong" department

I finally got around to taking that online php competency test that the recruiter sent me the link for ... and the 40 questions were SO lame. I wasn't expecting much (after all, the testing site is not only Windows-only; its IE-only), but really ... anyone with google handy and experience in almost any language could answer them all without breaking a sweat.

#14 Advantages of MySQL:

Which of the following is a disadvantage of MySQL when considering any other database for PHP?

A. MySQL is free in most circumstances.
B. MySQL comes embedded with PHP
C. MySQL is slower on UPDATES and INSERTS than most other databases
D. MySQL is cross-platform

The question doesn't make sense, and there's no option to skip it.

So I wrote my own little set of 8 test questions ... and sent them back to the recruiter, along with my comments about the original test.
http://groupehudson.com/postnuke/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=103

-10 points for bad math ;)

[pythorlh]

Most of your questions score with "Start with 10 points" and then go on to show some X worth of penalties. Your minimum score, however, is almost always -X. Shouldn't that come out to 10-X? Or are there extra penalties you're not showing us?

And that's not to be snarky. I don't know any php, so it was pretty much the only comment I could make.

Re:-10 points for bad math ;)

[tomhudson]

You're right - I'm deducting the -10 wrong answer twice. Just goes to show what happens when you're posting on slashdot about power lines in one tab (we're having a long debate about the cost of buried power lines here [slashdot.org]. It now includes Al Gore, etc), fixing some stuff on another site (enabling shipping charges per product), finding a few minutes to walk the dogs, and writing up something in another tab.

Doing so much, and getting so little done ...

Thanks.

As to what's wrong with the question:

MySQL is

answer (C)

[js7a]

But if it were true, it would be the only plausible answer, so of course it's the best answer, so you picked it. It is true befending on how you define "most," for early versions of MySQL.