General CS Questions

What is a function?

What's recursion? What's a recursive function?

What does it mean to pass something by reference? By value? What's a pointer?

What's a datatype? What are some common datatypes? What is static (or strong) typing vs. loose typing? Which one is better and why do you think so?

What's an exception? What are some reasons you might want to have an exception hierarchy?

What's an object? What's the difference between object oriented and procedural programming?

What's a constructor? Destructor? How are they typically used?

Explain public vs. private vs. protected.

What is inheritance?

What's an abstract class? What about an interface? What's the difference?

What does it mean to override a method? Advanced question: how can you prevent a method from being overridden (e.g. the keyword final)?

What does it mean to overload a method? (Note that not all OO languages support overloading)

What's an instance method/property vs a class (or static) method/property?

What does it mean for a set of objects to be 'loosely coupled' vs. 'tightly coupled'? What are the advantages & disadvantages of each?

Explain the difference between a simple and complex data type.

What's an associative array vs an indexed array? (note that not all languages have associative arrays)

Explain what a linked list is. Explain how it works, and how it is different than an array. Optional: write code to create one.

What's a stack? How's that different than a queue?

What is depth first search vs. breadth first search? Write/describe an algorithm for each.

Ask about the various sorting algorithms, e.g. insertion sort, merge sort & quicksort