ReviewNet Technical Screening Tests

2026 preface. From 1998 into 2002 I wrote and vetted technical screening tests for ReviewNet — the question banks employers used to evaluate programmers before deciding whether to interview them. It started in 1998 with a Java Fundamentals exam, an Advanced Java exam, and a Windows Scripting exam, and grew into a standing gig: by 2000 I was on retainer as a “Technology Review Team Member,” writing and validating questions across Java, J2EE, JSP, web scripting, and general web development, plus the occasional test assembled for a specific enterprise client. The last thing in the folder is a 2002 scenario assessment — a small Java applet that walked a candidate through a running program and questioned them on it, an early stab at testing judgment instead of recall.

Reading it back is the closest thing in the archive to a joke at my own expense. The premise of the whole business was that a fixed bank of questions could stand in for can this person actually do the job, and that controlling access to the bank was worth paying for. A language model now answers every one of them cold, instantly, for nothing. The test never measured the skill; it measured access to the answers, and the answers stopped being scarce. I spent four years helping build one of the small gates the current moment is busy knocking down, which is an odd thing to find on your own résumé in 2026.