Conked by NullPointer

I regularly conduct interviews for our department and there is this funny incident that I think qualifies for this blogspace. There are couple other contenders too; but still warming up as of now.

Friday afternoon ain’t really a good time to conduct interviews. Personally, I feel that people are tied up painting their plan with the weekend shades and it is an unwanted color that they need to smudge their painting with. Trust me readers, if you planning to shift and need to appear for an interview, try to make it between Tuesday and Thursday inclusive, as Monday is equally abominable …. I really need not delve into this can of worms.

I picked up the assessment sheet, waste printout paper and a pen on my way to the reception where Preeti was seated. There were a lot of gals at the reception that day; the guys outnumbered ; and as I called out her name, the most prettiest (mebbe even the hottest) gal rose to her feet. Pretty Preeti I chuckled as I lead the way to the conference room.

She was dressed to kill in formals; black trousers, white top, stilettos, nails painted with the favorite enamel color and the perfume she wore was too tantalizing for my mind. I hoped I wouldn’t fumble with my diction during the interview. We sat opposite to each other and I had a glimpse of her chiseled face complemented by eye brows done to perfection, glistening eyes and a strand of hair snuggled against her cheek. Whew ….

I started the interview with the regular questions for making the candidate comfortable and prepared for the technical combat. As we moved on with the OOP concepts, with an object being nothing much more than an instance of a class and a class is one from which objects are created so on and so forth, the decision was made. Reject!

I asked one of my favorite ending techie question to Preeti, for which till date I hadn’t received any answer; sensible or nonsensical.

“Java does not have pointers” I said
“Umm hmmm”, came her highhanded reply
“If it indeed doesn’t have any pointers, why do we get NullPointerException then?” I quizzed.

All the candidates till date have been stumped by this statement. Some look surprised “Hey, I really never thought about that” while others have simply stared back in disbelief “What the hell does he mean by that?” But pretty Preeti was an exception in herself (pun intended). Her reply left me dumbstruck ….

“It means that you tried to use a pointer which is not allowed, thus indicating ‘Do not use pointers’” came her pat reply which left me wondering if she has really written a java program in her life !!!