[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Interview question

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2023 at 02:13:45PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Jan 2, 2023, at 1:36 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > 
> > The /bin/sh stuff made me think of an interview question I had for engineers,
> > that a surprisingly few could pass:
> > 
> > "Tell me about something you wrote that was entirely you, the docs, the
> > tests, the source, the installer, everything.  It doesn't have to be a
> > big thing, but it has to have been successfully used by at least 10
> > people who had no contact with you (other than to say thanks)."
> > 
> > Most people fail this.  I think the people who pass might look 
> > positively on the v7 sh stuff.  But who knows?
> 
> Huh.  That is a surprisingly tricky question, depending on how you want to construe "entirely you".
>  
> Which of these, if any, do you count?

Any of them that are entirely done by you.  Here's an example.  I posted
move.c and copy.c to comp.sources.unix as an undergrad, a newbie.  They
let you do stuff like

	move =.c =.C++

and the = was the wild card.  .* in regexp.  They were a little better
than that because you could have more than one = and could expand with
something like \=2 \=1 (it's been 40 years, I might have the details 
wrong, still have the source, can post).  Just did

http://mcvoy.com/lm/move.shar

I know people used it because later in life it got mentioned.  But
literally noone ever asked me how to use it or install or anything.
It's a tiny thing but it meets what I was looking for.

Entirely you means entirely you.  If you have done that, you are in
a pretty small crowd.  
-- 
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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat