OSNews

85pts "you get bragging rights but probably wouldnt get hired", DANG! Hope my boss dosnt realize that.

That was a fun test. I ended up with 90 points, so I am "Dangerously Overinformed". I wouldn't have thought it was nearly as fun if I hadn't known most of the answers already though.

So...what does it tell about the test if I got 75, and last time I've had (brief) encounter with programming was 5 years ago with some dead basic C? ;P

ah, I had a better excuse
English is not my native language

No it's not. All the other answers were wrong, so it could only be that one. It could have said "The cat sat on the mat" and it'd still be correct.

You cannot store a decimal point in assembly, there is no such thing - only 1s and 0s. If you put a Float into a memory location, you can interpret those 1s and 0s anyhow you want. You could read it back as an Int, or an ASCII value, or even execute it as a Mnemonic.

Some of the best C64 code (Demos and some of the better copy-protection schemes like Timex) used this kind of behaviour to write self-modifying code. There's many creative things you can do when you write assembly by hand, but it's a real minefield to work in.

If you don't know what kind of data is there in the memory location you are accessing and its binary representation in the architecture(s) you are using you shouldn't be using assembly at all, not even C.
However, the much maligned Systems Hungarian notation can be very useful when dealing with assembly code.

That was my favorite questions; although "devout prayer" would be the answer for pretty much any question about assembly.

You somehow expected more out of InfoWorld?
Only managers and wannabes read InfoWorld.

To be honest, I don't expect much of IT journalism, generally. In fact, I lost fate in any kind of journalism long ago. I read those articles while I am having coffee, that's all.

DG

well, since there is a small chance that the Hungarian notation is coming from the Polytechnic Univ, Budapest they had to choose Bucharest to make it completely false answer...

Where does he said it was Hungary's capital?
He doesn't.

And this university exists, is located in Bucharest, which is a hungarian city.

Well, no, Bucharest is the capital city of Romania.

I stand corrected.
Thanks.

It's a good thing they don't have a geography quiz, the scores would be a lot lower...

"How can someone so ignorant be employed as an editor at InfoWorld?

For the question about Hungarian Notation one of the possible answers was:

d. It was invented at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Hungary

For the thousand time Bucharest is not the capital of Hungary, Budapest is."

Wow...don't even know how to answer this one. When do you start as editor for InfoWorld???

"For the thousand time Bucharest is not the capital of Hungary, Budapest is."

It's the other way round too. We have a lot of fun here in Bucharest/Romania when a singer/statesmen messes them up.

And for all you English lubbers, you mess them up because you make them sound alike. They're actually:
"Boo-dah-pehsht" and "Boo-coo-reh-shti", where that last "ti" is pronounced like "li" in Linux.

Edited 2008-07-29 19:12 UTC

Somebody please tell me why is a comment made by Jabbotts modded down. Because it is not enough on the Party Line which is anti-Microsoft ? Man, what an attitude !

DG

Watch how all the geeks on this thread will make antagonistic comments and excuses for not getting 100%. "It's a stupid quiz", "doesn't mean anything", "editor is retarded", etc. etc.

I got 65% and for what it's worth, I don't care. It affects my programming self-esteem, neither one way or the other. It's just a quiz people.

Tend to agree. Seems this "test" has more to do with this guy's vision of himself as a great wit than with technical expertise. Yeah, I got a 75 and it's been years since I programmed in C and decades since I programmed in Assembler, but many of the questions and answers are surrounded by ongoing "discussion" so his version of the correct answer may be in dispute.

I don't think the test was meant to be taken very seriously - I mean the question about soft drinks?? So chuckle a little and increment you program counter!

The key is that javascript is NOT a lite version of Java. This is probably one of the most ANNOYING misconceptions ever in the IT world. I don't know how many times I have heard hiring managers, developers - eople who should know better confuse the two. I cringe when I hear people say something like "yeah we need a Java developer to help with some of our web pages", when they really mean a Javascript developer. The languages share nothing except a "c-like" syntax (braces, semi-colons). Javascript really has far more in common with the functional languages.

So personally, I was glad to see that question. It really was a marketing decision to include the word "java" in javascript. However, it was a very poor decision. It created a lot of unnecessary confusion.

It actually reminds me of the word "Basic" in Visual Basic. While VB is actually a derivative of Basic, unfortunately the word "Basic" confuses many adminsitrative folks. They see the word and think that it must be easy. I have seen this played out such that non-programmers are hired as VB programmers, because, well, it's basic! How hard can it be? In fact, one job I interviewed actually called it "Visual Basics". I had to keep myself from laughing during the interview. In reality, enterprise applications of great complexity and depth can be created with VB (even before .NET). However there is a "pile" of VB guys out there that to a certain extent were created due to the word "basic" in the title.

Words are funny!

Just because they have superficial similarities to a third project, doesn't mean those two are related in any way.

Well, who hasn't developed a compression algorithm that reduces the size of any file by 90% or more - with the only bug that he was then unable to retrieve the complete original files.