Re: Embedded systems programmers worldwide earn failing grades in C

[Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org>]

"Alex R. Mosteo" <alejandro@mosteo.com> writes:
> Keith Thompson wrote:
>
>> "Alex R. Mosteo" <alejandro@mosteo.com> writes:
>>> alexandru.chircu@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://www.edadesignline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300710
>>>> 
>>>> I leave the witty remarks to the more regular posters here :).
>>>
>>> I just took it, and scored 7/10, with the caveat that
>>>
>>> 2 of my failures were partial (I chose one were several were valid), so I
>>> didn't chose wrong code.
>>>
>>> The other is that I rejected a solution that all compilers accepted, so I
>>> would never write it.
>>>
>>> All in all, I have not chosen a single unsafe answer :P
>> 
>> Are you sure about that?  I took the test myself, and as far as I
>> could tell there was exactly one correct answer for each question,
>> though some of the incorrect answers were incorrect for fairly subtle
>> reasons.
>
> Well, yes, that's why I scored 7/10 and not 9/10 :P. But in two that I 
> failed, the right one was "all of the above are correct", so my choice 
> wasn't "wrong", in the sense that the answer I chose wasn't unsafe or not 
> portable, which seemed to be the main gripe for the testers.

Ok.  But if one of the choices is "all of the above are correct", and
all of the above are in fact correct, then that's the right answer and
any other answer is wrong, even if that answer would otherwise have
been correct.

> I see that as a problem with how the questions were formulated. I'm not very 
> fond of these kind of tests precisely because it's too easy to ask the wrong 
> questions. Anyway, I was just joking around ;)

Yeah, and I'm sure I'm taking this whole thing way too seriously.  8-)}

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org  <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something.  This is something.  Therefore, we must do this."
    -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"