NET Developers Ought To Know

What Great .NET Developers Ought To Know

Everyone who writes code
* Describe the difference between a Thread and a Process?
* What is a Windows Service and how does its lifecycle differ from a "standard" EXE?
* What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows can address? Is this different than the maximum virtual memory for the system? How would this affect a system design?
* What is the difference between an EXE and a DLL?
* What is strong-typing versus weak-typing? Which is preferred? Why?
* Corillian's product is a "Component Container." Name at least 3 component containers that ship now with the Windows Server Family.
* What is a PID? How is it useful when troubleshooting a system?
* How many processes can listen on a single TCP/IP port?
* What is the GAC? What problem does it solve?

Mid-Level .NET Developer
* Describe the difference between Interface-oriented, Object-oriented and Aspect-oriented programming.
* Describe what an Interface is and how it’s different from a Class.
* What is Reflection?
* What is the difference between XML Web Services using ASMX and .NET Remoting using SOAP?
* Are the type system represented by XmlSchema and the CLS isomorphic?
* Conceptually, what is the difference between early-binding and late-binding?
* Is using Assembly.Load a static reference or dynamic reference?
* When would using Assembly.LoadFrom or Assembly.LoadFile be appropriate?
* What is an Asssembly Qualified Name? Is it a filename? How is it different?
* Is this valid? Assembly.Load("foo.dll");
* How is a strongly-named assembly different from one that isn’t strongly-named?
* Can DateTimes be null?
* What is the JIT? What is NGEN? What are limitations and benefits of each?
* How does the generational garbage collector in the .NET CLR manage object lifetime? What is non-deterministic finalization?
* What is the difference between Finalize() and Dispose()?
* How is the using() pattern useful? What is IDisposable? How does it support deterministic finalization?
* What does this useful command line do? tasklist /m "mscor*"
* What is the difference between in-proc and out-of-proc?
* What technology enables out-of-proc communication in .NET?
* When you’re running a component within ASP.NET, what process is it running within on Windows XP? Windows 2000? Windows 2003?

Senior Developers/Architects