After I submitted a job application to Soluwise, the company gave me a programming test. I needed to write a program that:

• …uses regular expressions when reading a webpage of movie showtimes
• …extracts the actual movie names and showtimes
• …makes a standards-compliant HTML file that displays that data in a specific way

Each movie table must have the following parts in the following colors:

• Title: blue
• Dates: red
• Times: alternating between yellow and green

I also needed to attach instructions that say what the program can do and how you are supposed to run the program. The program itself must be commented. Though I was allowed to use any programming language and submit the program at any time, I would get the highest number of points if I used Perl 5 and submitted the program by the day after I received the test. If I did use Perl, the software must use the "use strict" line.

An extra challenge was that both the language Perl 5 and regular expressions were unknown to me. In the week before the test, I focused on studying both. I also took my time in familiarizing myself with Active Perl and Komodo IDE, the type of Perl and integrated development environment the test reccomended me, because there was the possibility that I would need to use them at my job. At test time, during the two days I had, I spent:

• …half a day planning the algorithm
• …half a day writing the code
• …half a day debugging the program

After I submitted the program, Soluwise went on and did a couple of interviews with me. They were actually seeking someone who can acquire new programming languages quickly.

The program and documentation are in English.