Re: What's the best language to start with

["Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>]

Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote in article
<dewar.840032915@schonberg>...
> Tim says
> 
> "I would say about 95-98% of the applicants get this question
> wrong.  I have had people I respect give the "obvious" wrong answer,
> though, so it's mostly a matter of not really thinking about it
> before answering."
> 
> I can't see an obviously wrong answer, only a trivially right one, so
> perhaps you should tell us the mysterious obviously wrong answer. I tried
> this on a few people around here and they were all as puzzled as I was.

Well, it seemed obvious to me, too when I heard it the first time
(A friend of mine's father used it as an intelligence test to
programmers), but I guess that shows the general level of
competence in the world.

The typical wrong answer (if I get an answer at all) is to describe
some elaborate data structure to keep track of the "duplicates".
Here's a couple of examples [pulling off the "reject" stack]:

-----------
"The basic need for the program is to replace the input, given
from a C source, with a unique name of "VARXXXXX".

The main body of this program would simply read in data (in c)
and replace it with a variable name.  In order to make sure any
one input source did not have the same variable name (as what it
might be replaced with) we would simply have to add a condition
to our loop.  The program would be set up in the form of a _loop_
where a variable is read _AND_ check that the unique name it will
be replaced with is not the same as the input source file and
then proceed to replace the variables.  In the case where the
input file did have the same variable, a new variable name would
have to be used."  [Underlines were the applicant's]

-------------------
- or -

"I guess it depends on the requirements, performance, but you
could read the code first, save all the variables in a list,
then read the code a second time, then you replace the variable
to a new name, you can check to see if exists already."

Without mentioning the school, this last graduated with a 3.5
and a Dean's Honor List distinction.  Completely unable to
think.
---------------------
I wasn't intentionally picking the most lame ones, BTW; these
were pretty much the ones on the top of the (reject) stack.

Also to be fair, I make them hand-write the solutions, which
is why the grammar is often not perfect (although, still
pretty lame).

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)