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Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

quiz.triplebyte.com

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Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#81

Post by a3n »

sinistersnare wrote: post #4
ammon wrote: post #2

We (Triplebyte) actually tested a while ago whether identifying languages was predictive as an interview question (we thought it might predict general experience / exposure to lots of code). It was not predictive of anything. So this quiz is just for fun!

It is worded opposite of what you say: > You're in the top 3% of engineers! (We should know, we've interviewed thousands.) We can totally help you get a job if you're interested. It is worded as if scoring well in this is an accurate predictor of engineering skill.

It may be an accurate predictor of who will respond to ads.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#82

Post by QuercusMax »

sleepychu wrote: post #71
_raoulcousins wrote: post #21

14/15. I basically only program Python, but I guessed based on vague stereotypes of different languages. The wrong one was guessing Java for C#.

That's a pretty fair toss-up if you're not familiar with either.

Biggest giveaway (as a lifelong Java programmer who's probably only written about 100 lines of C#, ever) is that C# Likes To Capitalize Freaking Everything. Java typically only capitalizes Types, but C# capitalizes Method Names as well.

It's like it was created by somebody who either likes German, or Olde-Timey English Writing.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#83

Post by QuercusMax »

SilasX wrote: post #32
throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

Got 14/15 but I have a feeling it was only because I made the assumption I would not see the same language twice. Without that assumption a few were toss ups for me. Of all the languages on there the only one in that set I had never used / seen at all is Kotin and that's the one I got wrong. Several of them were mandatory for me to learn in college but I haven't seen since. (looking at you, Prolog and Verilog... Veri…

Got 14/15 because I couldn't tell Emacs Lisp from Clojure. Argh ...

Missed this as well. I should have guessed Clojure because it's a language people actually might use. All I could tell is it's some kind of Lisp.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#85

Post by ronald_raygun »

khedoros1 wrote: post #33
pmontra wrote: post #10

14/15. I guessed wrong between Piet and GLSL which I never heard about. How many possible questions are there?

Piet's an esoteric, and GLSL is OpenGL's Shader Language. GLSL looks kind of C-like, while Piet looks like Mondrian paintings (for many programs, anyhow).

Yeah, I got that problem because I knew who Piet Mondrian was, so I took an educated guess.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#86

Post by vram22 »

Just did it, and got 14/15. But see below.

Saw this thread yesterday and at first did not feel like taking the quiz (because I thought I would not do well, also because I didn't think it was too interesting).

But today read about half of this thread again. Then felt motivated to take the quiz (just for fun). Was not expecting more than say 8/15. Surprised to see I got 14/15 (but in top 3% of engineers -- definitely not :). It was definitely partly due to reading some of this thread first, else I would never have been able to figure out the Ada/VHDL question (at least just by guessing / logic / prior knowledge), even less the Piet one (since had never heard of it - at least had heard of Ada and VHDL). I guess the result was also partly due to being interested in programming languages right from the start of my career, and having at least read a little about many, and having dabbled in some (apart from the ones I worked in for non-trivial periods).

Anyway - somewhat interesting quiz idea.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#87

Post by vram22 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

Got 14/15 but I have a feeling it was only because I made the assumption I would not see the same language twice. Without that assumption a few were toss ups for me. Of all the languages on there the only one in that set I had never used / seen at all is Kotin and that's the one I got wrong. Several of them were mandatory for me to learn in college but I haven't seen since. (looking at you, Prolog and Verilog... Veri…

I got Kotlin right, but only because I happened to see some Kotlin code (due to the somewhat recent HN thread about it, based on a post by Steve Yegge), else might have got it wrong, due to maybe thinking Kotlin syntax would likely be similar to Java.

On second thoughts, though, I guess there is no need for a JVM language's syntax to resemble Java's (much, anyway). E.g. Jython, JRuby, Groovy, etc.

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#89

Post by dunham »

sethrin wrote: post #75
dunham wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, because I knew they intersected and presumed it was a trick question. Technically, I believe it is neither valid perl nor PHP because it's missing an opening brace on one of the if statements.

PHP lets you skip using curly braces for conditionals. I've seen real-world code which used this style only once, and it was about as bad as you'd expect.

Yeah, I suspected that, but it looked like there was a close brace and no open brace. (I only noticed because I was specifically looking at the braces to try to determine if it was PHP.)

Re: Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz

#90

Post by xorraxrax »

I got 14/15 in the language quiz and after completing the full programming test, I was told I did exceptionally well (though I suspect that's what they say to all the boys) and was invited to schedule a Google Hangouts technical interview.

However, at some point along the way, I was automatically logged-in as "John Baker", a (presumably fictional) US citizen with a throwaway email address looking for work in San Francisco.

When I tried to edit the profile, I was told that they only work with companies hiring in SF and NY.

Thanks for wasting my time, Triplebyte.

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