Before going to a technical interview you must know and understand the expectations of the interviewer. Every good interviewer knows that 30-40 minutes of questioning about basics and definitions can not guarantee that a good developer / software professional will be found.

There is no single criteria to find a true great professional, be it of any level.

Asking tough & tricky questions are not a sure way to get the best person. A person might be very good technically but on the other hand he might be a bad team worker ( which can be very detrimental to a project ).

So if you are in a technical interview and the interviewer is really good he will look for the following qualities more than your quality to memorize definitions, answer of basic bookish questions

• Your fundamental understanding of the technology you are aspiring to work on?
• Your ability to pick up new things and challenges?
• Ability to see and conceptualize an overall picture?
• Your understanding of software development process and ability to tackle different kind of development environments?
• Your understanding that coding is only a small portion of a project life cycle?
• Your ability and approach to understand and solve problems?
• How do you interact with others?
• How do you deal with adverse and crisis situations?
• How well you communicate?
• How well you perform under pressure?
• How good a team player are you?

and many more of this kind ….

And to determine if you have these qualities he may ask you to :

• Demonstrate conceptual understanding of some of the fundamentals of software engineering
• Answer more generalized questions about hard core fundamentals of the technology and then provide some kind of concrete examples
• Describe your last or favorite project and how it worked
• Describe the overall architecture of your last or favorite project and how it worked
• Describe any adverse or crisis situation you were into and how you faced it
• Answer any open ended question ( which don’t have any definite answer )
• Describe your previous company / boss or coworker