The level of pressure and requirements are so similar to coding interview challenges (if not more grueling - 14 hours?!) that not only should Elaine be certified as a level 3 judge, but she should also get a pass on the technical round of any future coding interview!
It’s a Unix system I know this
11–20 of 64 posts
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#12For anyone who didn't get the reference in the post title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxIPcbmo1_U
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#13I had to jump in here, not to argue with the substance of the article[1] but to pull out this one quote that I just can't get behind: > In popular media, a genius hacker codes some solution from scratch in the space of an hour or two, solving a problem that would otherwise doom the other protagonists. But in reality, programming is slow. I mean, sure, it's not like The Movies. But hacking is fast ! In no other profes…
In 1989, a freshman in college, I was introduced to the world of TinyMUDs. The creator, Jim Aspnes, was at Carnegie-Mellon at the time; he whipped up a server codebase basically from scratch over a weekend, and spun it up on his desktop NeXTstation. Before he knew it, there were up to 64 concurrent players and the thing was eating all his physical RAM space.
His famous quote was: "It was a weekend hack that got out of hand!" and with hindsight, that motto ruled the lives of many MUD hackers. Whether or not we stayed in college, for better or worse, we took on coding projects as weekend hacks, and they took over our lives!
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#14I had to jump in here, not to argue with the substance of the article[1] but to pull out this one quote that I just can't get behind: > In popular media, a genius hacker codes some solution from scratch in the space of an hour or two, solving a problem that would otherwise doom the other protagonists. But in reality, programming is slow. I mean, sure, it's not like The Movies. But hacking is fast ! In no other profes…
We all get times like that, but capes are like tuxes, you don't get to wear them every day.
The thing about the cape is that it usually comes with a lot of spandex too. Everyone conveniently leaves that part out.
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#15Amusingly, that UI in the film is a real piece of Unix software named FSN on IRIX; I used it some around 1994 on Silicon Graphics hosts at Origin Games.
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#16I had to jump in here, not to argue with the substance of the article[1] but to pull out this one quote that I just can't get behind: > In popular media, a genius hacker codes some solution from scratch in the space of an hour or two, solving a problem that would otherwise doom the other protagonists. But in reality, programming is slow. I mean, sure, it's not like The Movies. But hacking is fast ! In no other profes…
You just described spending about 10 hours on a problem, rather than 1 or 2 hours.
That's an incredible difference.
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#17Cool story! For anyone who has been in the competitive speech and debate community for a while (or has ever encountered tech trouble), this a similar thrill/challenge as hand-pairing rounds, keeping side constraints, pull-ups, etc. in mind.
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#18I had to jump in here, not to argue with the substance of the article[1] but to pull out this one quote that I just can't get behind: > In popular media, a genius hacker codes some solution from scratch in the space of an hour or two, solving a problem that would otherwise doom the other protagonists. But in reality, programming is slow. I mean, sure, it's not like The Movies. But hacking is fast ! In no other profes…
In 1989, a freshman in college, I was introduced to the world of TinyMUDs. The creator, Jim Aspnes, was at Carnegie-Mellon at the time; he whipped up a server codebase basically from scratch over a weekend, and spun it up on his desktop NeXTstation. Before he knew it, there were up to 64 concurrent players and the thing was eating all his physical RAM space. His famous quote was: "It was a weekend hack that got out o…
[deleted]
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#19I had to jump in here, not to argue with the substance of the article[1] but to pull out this one quote that I just can't get behind: > In popular media, a genius hacker codes some solution from scratch in the space of an hour or two, solving a problem that would otherwise doom the other protagonists. But in reality, programming is slow. I mean, sure, it's not like The Movies. But hacking is fast ! In no other profes…
Agreed, writing production-grade, user-facing software is slow, which is what we spend lots of our time on. On the other hand, writing small programs to automate boring stuff can be incredibly fast.
Re: It’s a Unix system I know this
#20Oh, the many faces of "DCI Reporter" not working well. Can't believe it's gotten worse since I was playing competitively, but then again, it's Bill Stark and Wizards of the Coast. I should have no problem believing it.
Great article, though!