Bandwidth Place 2

I am going to be interviewing for two different companies in the very near future. The position will be software engineering.

My question is what would you study/freshen up on?


I have an inside tip for one of the companies in that they are looking for Java developers and they "don't want to have to baby sit anyone".

I had an upper level class in advanced object oriented programing and the language used was Java so I feel that I am somewhat in the ball park. However that was two years ago. I am somewhat rusty in Java and i know that I need to refresh.

I also know that I should go over basic algorithmic things, data structures, discrete math topics, software methodologies, efficiencies, as well as what is on my resume.

I'm going to bring in a few short small and concise examples of work in Java and C++ because I feel not many candidates do that.

Anything else that you feel I should be prepared for?

Definitely know the differences between abstract and interface classes and be able to tell which is more suitable for a particular situation.

Also know design patterns like model-view-controller and some others... There are tons of them so really the point is to show that you know and will implement an actual design in your work instead of just doing whatever is necessary (hacking) to make something do what you want it to do.

It has been over half a year since I went through interviews so I don't remember a whole lot, but those two things were definitely asked by most of the companies I interviewed for.

There are also book thingies like this that have been recommended to me, but I understand that they aren't exactly suitable for a quick refresh before an interview. That said, I will admit that I still haven't read it.

My work is Java-heavy where even the website implementations are usually written in Java (not a web language) with Google Web Toolkit being used to compile it into Javascript (web language). They recently gave a list of required reading for all software engineers (grrrrr) which is:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201633612
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201485672
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321278658
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321146530