To all who Think Themselves a Programmer

Is there anything in the ad that isn't already encouraging its readers to make decisions based on appearance (in this case, that of a fun and elite group of people)?

In what possible way is 'send us the coolest "hello world" you've got, and we'll critique your style' not an invitation to judge by appearance?

AndrewWarner• 17 years ago

Frig, how did you figure that out?

stcredzero• 17 years ago

This is not necessarily the kind of awesome that makes for success. But it seems to have been working for them for 5 years, so best of luck.

brown9-22• 17 years ago

I can't wait for the overusage of "fail" to die out:

  curl -s http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/eng/1246353621.html | grep -ci "fail"
  15

IsaacSchlueter• 17 years ago

I don't mind "fail". But the overusage of "ninja" really annoys me to no end.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

Agreed, they may as well say "goon" or "minion." How about "software engineer" or "professional"?

Well, I guess with the crowd these guys are going for, maybe those terms don't really apply...

jjames• 17 years ago

Why doesn't anyone ever want to hire a coding pirate?

ca98am79• 17 years ago

"rock star" annoys the hell out of me

edw5193• 17 years ago

Just as companies use your resume to screen you, you can use their ad to screen them.

I hope that they ran this ad to stand out and be hip.

But just in case the people in this company are like the ad they are running, run, don't walk, the other way from these elitist snobs desperately in need of an attitude adjustment.

Here's my submission:

digits = [70,85,67,75,89,79,85];

for(i=0;i++;i<7){print chr(digits(i))};

khafra• 17 years ago

I would hijack the ocaml raytracer at http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/comparison..., make 3-d font primitives, and write it out. But I'm a bit underskilled and unmotivated to do anything other than propose it as the ultimate over-the-top answer to the ad.

evgen• 17 years ago

The best snarky answer to this ad I have seen was someone who proposed running random bitstrings through sha1, looking for a hash that was a repetition of the ascii chars for hello world. The comment on the entry noted that they would not consider taking the job until the company could provide the string which would hash to a successful result.

berntb• 17 years ago

Just Google for japh. There are lots of examples, easy to convert.

I'm a Perl lover which argue that with Moose and CPAN, modern Perl is incredibly good for development in many cases.

But I must say that I never understood the idea of obfuscation in Perl. If you throw out coding standards, it is like tennis without a net. :-)

Edit: If I'd done it from scratch, I'd probably have gone with the curses lib, since it was such a long time since I last used it. (The japh stuff represents at least months of creativity by people that are both smarter and crazier than I am. Don't reinvent the wheel.)

tdavis• 17 years ago

At first I thought they were trying to be ironic. But they keep it at such a level that I think they're being serious. In which case, I'd definitely run.

embeddedradical• 17 years ago

  print 'hell'
  sleep 1500ms
  print 'o'
  for i=0->2
    sleep 500ms  
    cursorleft = cursorleft-1
    print o
  sleep 700ms
  print ' world'

sethg• 17 years ago

"Well, the pay sucks, but I like the company uniform..."

StrawberryFrog• 17 years ago

Thanks but no thanks, I can only work for people who speak English* .

Like in the 20th century, when I was born. Call me old-fashioned, but...

* not prejudiced, just not fluent in other languages.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

I felt a bit like I was reading something translated into english by Google.

Putting on a 'better than thou' attitude can be fun and amusing at times, but it works better if you command a decent grasp on the English language.

jongraehl• 17 years ago

Admit it: if you needed the job, you'd be strutting your best "leet ninja hacker" moves.

omouse• 17 years ago

Hell yes.

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

Was going to send this to them, but they requested serious attempts only, so here you go HN:

WSA:

  push 10
  push 97
  push 106
  push 110
  push 105
  push 78
  push 32
  push 111
  push 108
  dup
  push 101
  push 72
  push 11
  label 100
  swap
  outchar
  push 1
  sub
  dup
  jn 200
  jump 100
  label 200
  exit

Whitespace is actually a really easy-to-code-for stack machine, you just need an assembler. Now you too can pretend to be elite.

EDIT: post originally included the compiled Whitespace code, but HN does not approve of that. Fixed the line break problem, thanks to someone reminding me it needs a blank line before and after.

edw5193• 17 years ago

"It also doesn't approve of line breaks."

Indent each line 2 spaces, format it however you want, and resubmit.

_cbsz2• 17 years ago

Added the 2-space indent; it did not work.

troels• 17 years ago

Here's mine:

  Hello World

It's valid PHP, and it prints "Hello World".

aarongough3• 17 years ago

I find the whole idea quite amusing... Reminds me a little of the demo scene back in the day. I put this together with that in mind, simple but I wanted to keep the code neat (JavaScript):

EDIT: Realized I should add an online preview, the animation starts 6 seconds after the page loads... http://aarongough.com/hello_world.html

  function floatPixel ( pixelFilled, pixelSize )
    {      
    this.render = function ()
      {
      if( thisObj.pixelFilled ) thisObj.pixel.style.background = "black";
      if( !thisObj.pixelFilled ) thisObj.pixel.style.background = "white";
      }
      
    this.animate = function()
      {
      thisObj.pixelFilled = true;
      thisObj.render();
      }
    
    var thisObj = this;
    this.pixelFilled = pixelFilled;
    this.pixelSize = pixelSize;
    this.pixel = document.createElement("div");
    this.pixel.style.height = this.pixelSize + "px";
    this.pixel.style.width = this.pixelSize + "px";
    this.pixel.style.cssFloat = "left";
    
    this.render();
    
    this.timer = setTimeout( this.animate, Math.floor( Math.random() * 15000 + 6000 ));
      
    document.getElementById("pixel_container").appendChild( this.pixel );
    }
    
  document.body.style.background = "black";
  document.body.style.textAlign = "center";   
    
  var pixelContainer = document.createElement("div");
  pixelContainer.id = "pixel_container";
  pixelContainer.style.height = "50px";
  pixelContainer.style.width = "900px";
  pixelContainer.style.margin = "200px auto";
  pixelContainer.style.position = "relative";
  document.body.appendChild( pixelContainer );
  
  var pixelData = "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001000100011111000100000001000000011111000000100010001111100011110000100000001110000010000000000000000100010001000000010000000100000001000100000010001000100010001000100010000000100100001000000000000000011111000111110001000000010000000100010000001000100010001000111100001000000010001000100000000000000001000100010000000100000001000000010001000000101010001000100010001000100000001001000000000000000000000100010001111100011111000111110001111100000011011000111110001000100011111000111000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000";
  
  for( x = 0; x < pixelData.length; x++ )
    {
    new floatPixel( parseInt(pixelData.slice(x, x + 1)), 9 );
    }

eli• 17 years ago

It's just a cheesy job ad. Am I missing something?

Batsu• 17 years ago

Don't think so, but judging by the amount replies on this topic I think they may have achieved the goal of exposure at no cost all the same.

okeumeni• 17 years ago

First read: WTF!

Second look: Awesomely original

Semiapies• 17 years ago

"Oblong" can both describe programming skill and be a sentence by itself?

gaius• 17 years ago

Oblong.

nathanwdavis• 17 years ago

This is the type of work environment that I would like to receive and offer for and then tell them "Sorry, based upon your application process, your company appears to be a lame place to work."

The job posting seems like something Dwight from The Office would create.

lukeofman• 17 years ago

When I see companies advertising poor real-world ways of engineering, it just makes me think of the documents I make on my projects showing code made by some engineers and how a solution could have been made in half the code (or less), more clearly, more abstracted, more efficient, and fewer bugs.

Do these people use dumb interview questions like asking people to list c language trigraphs? Sure, someone that knows it might be a good programmer, but they might also write obfuscated piles of crap that cause bugs since they over complicate problems.

hvs• 17 years ago

A little too high of a douchey : cool ratio.

ganjianwei• 17 years ago

This ad has succeeded to the extent that it's getting pretty popular on Hacker News and (hopefully) it's attracting the types of programmers they're out to hire.

Assuming that they've got their 'ideal hire' right, it's almost a win-win situation for them: if you hate the ad, you probably don't like their culture; if you love it, you'll apply and you might just fit right in with these "ninjas".

It alienates some but at least not the people they're trying to hire. I'm not saying such a culture's going to be great for them, just that posting such an ad will get them exactly who they want, and some mad publicity as well.

dasil0032• 17 years ago

If they want to hire 18-year-old hackers than it's probably okay, but I'm 30, love a fun work environment, and I'm pretty turned off by being so flip about CS. How can you praise a candidate for loving Haskell but be so arrogant to think CS has no value.

steveklabnik• 17 years ago

It's not that CS has no value. It's that formal education in CS may not be what it's cracked up to be.

derefr• 17 years ago

I imagine that it has no value to them. They're not out to create any new algorithms/systems/compilers/languages, simply to make proper use of the ones in existing libraries. To put it in the way they'd likely say it: "Ninja don't forge katana."

frig8• 17 years ago

Additionally: in the spirit of good natured fun, here's my (clearly non-serious) entry:

'' def findPossibleSolutions(querytext): for result in GoogleCodeSearch(query=querytext): yield result

def tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate): output = None with SafeSandboxedEvaluatorFactoryFactory(candidate.language).safeSandboxedEvaluator() as evaluator: output = evaluator.evaluate(candidate.code) return output

def validatePossibleSolution(candidate, validator): return validator(tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate))

def giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes(querytext,validator): for validSolution in (candidate for candidate in findPossibleSolutions(querytext) if validatePossibleSolution(candidate,validator)): yield {'source'=validSolution.code,'extension'=validSolution.languageExtension}

if __name__ == "__main__": helloWorlds = giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes("hello world", lambda x: x == "hello world") firstValidSource = helloWorlds() if firstValidSource: print "helloworld.%s:\n\n%s" % (firstValidSource["extension"],firstValidSource["source"]) else: print "helloworld.py:\n\nprint \"hello world\"" # default case ''

Edit: if there's a way to reproduce source code please inform.

DougBTX• 17 years ago

Indent by 2+ spaces, like so:

pre

frig8• 17 years ago

Thanks.

frig8• 17 years ago

Missed the edit interval, so:

  def findPossibleSolutions(querytext): 
    for result in GoogleCodeSearch(query=querytext): 
      yield result

  def tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate): 
    output = None 
    with SafeSandboxedEvaluatorFactoryFactory(candidate.language).safeSandboxedEvaluator() as evaluator: 
      output = evaluator.evaluate(candidate.code) 
      return output

  def validatePossibleSolution(candidate, validator): return 
    validator(tryOutPossibleSolution(candidate))

  def giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes(querytext,validator): 
    for validSolution in (candidate for candidate in findPossibleSolutions(querytext) if validatePossibleSolution(candidate,validator)): 
      yield {'source'=validSolution.code,'extension'=validSolution.languageExtension}

  if __name__ == "__main__": 
    helloWorlds = giveMeValidSolutionSourceCodes("hello world", lambda x: x == "hello world") 
    firstValidSource = helloWorlds() 
    if firstValidSource: 
      print "helloworld.%s:\n\n%s" % (firstValidSource["extension"],firstValidSource["source"]) 
    else: 
      print "helloworld.py:\n\nprint \"hello world\"" # default case ''

Periodic• 17 years ago

I thought the point of ninjas was often to get things done with maximum efficiency. Thus I believe "echo" is a great solution. Why write what someone has already written for you?

Do they want people who are going to do things in the most impractical and convoluted way possible? If so, I wouldn't recommend betting on them releasing a stable product in the near future.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

T-t-t-timecube!

sil3ntmac• 17 years ago

  $ cat /usr/share/dict/words | egrep -o "(^world$)|(^hello$)"

jeckel• 17 years ago

I guess they want to hire a programmer who would refuse to find the simplest solution to the problem but rather obfuscate it, making maintainability a nightmare.

aarongough3• 17 years ago

I actually find the whole idea quite amusing! Granted it's probably not a great way to get employees who are good at working as opposed to hacking about, but I still like it...

I put my money where my mouth is and sent this in (wait about 6 seconds after page-load for the animation to start): http://aarongough.com/hello_world.html

aarongough3• 17 years ago

Stephen was kind enough to tell me that my entry was 'fail' because it 'Killed woodland animals'... When I asked him which ones he replied:

  All of them,
  Best,
    Stephen

Wow! Constructive! I was hoping that the ad was written with humor, but apparently not!

Good luck with that elitism!

diiq• 17 years ago

Oh, dear. It's so hard to turn down a challenge, but I don't think I'd really like to work for ninjas. They sound... oblong?

(defun ensure-list (a) (if (listp a) a (loop for i from 0 to a collect i))) (defparameter l '(0 7 (0 3) (0 3) 7 0 7 (1 4 7) (1 7) (1 7) 1 0 7 1 1 1 1 0 7 1 1 1 1 0 6 (7 1) (7 1) (7 1) 6 0)) (defparameter g (loop for i from 0 to 9 collecting (loop for i from 1 to (length l) collecting ()))) (setf g (append (list (mapcar (lambda (sp) 's) (car g))) (cdr g))) (defun s () (setf g (append (list (loop for i from 1 to (length (car g)) collecting (if (< .1 (random 1.0)) 's ()))) (loop for i from 1 to (1- (length g)) collecting (mapcar (lambda (a b x) (if (and a (or (not (find (- (length globe) i) (ensure-list x))) (> .05 (random 1.0)))) 's (and b (not (find (- (length globe) i) (ensure-list x)))))) (nth (- i 1) g) (nth i g) l))))) (defun d (itm) (cond ((not itm) (format t ". ")) ((atom itm) (format t "$$")) ((listp itm) (d (car itm)) (d (cdr itm)) (format t "~&")))) (defun start () (dotimes (x 200) (s)(sleep 1/24)(d g)))

(start)

San• 17 years ago

Here's an anagram-sorter. (I'm no Python ninja, but I quite liked my idea.)

  def sort(s):
    listt = list(s)
    listt.sort(cmp=lambda a,b: cmp( ord(b)%len(s) , ord(a)%len(s) ))
    print ''.join(listt),

  sort('Oh,well')
  sort('lord')

And this is the rather succinct Ruby version:

  def sort s
    print s.split(//).sort_by.with_index{|a,i|[-(a.ord%s.length),i]}.join
  end

  sort 'Oh,well'
  sort 'lord'

j_baker• 17 years ago

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that hiring someone who can't write a hello world app without using one of their "fail" methods is a really stupid idea?

DougWebb• 17 years ago

The 'win' that said they'd write a genetic algorithm got me interested, but I'm not looking for a job, so here's what I came up with:

  #!/usr/bin/perl

  use strict;
  use warnings;

  our $POP_SIZE      = 100;
  our @GOAL          = map { ord($_) - 32 } split //, 'hello world';
  our $MUTATION_RATE = 0.05;
  our $GENE_LENGTH   = scalar @GOAL;

  use constant GENE  => 0;
  use constant SCORE => 1;

  my @population = make_initial_population( $POP_SIZE, $GENE_LENGTH );
  my $generation = 1;

  while (1) {
      @population = rank(@population);

      print as_string( $population[0][GENE] ) . "\n";

      last if $population[0][SCORE] == 0;

      @population = mutate( sex(@population) );

      $generation++;
  }

  exit;

  ##################################################

  sub as_string {
      return join( '', map { chr( $_ + 32 ) } @{ $_[0] } );
  }

  ##################################################

  sub rank {
      my @population = @_;

      for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < @population ; $i++ ) {
          $population[$i][SCORE] = score( $population[$i][GENE] );
      }

      @population =
        sort { $a->[SCORE] <=> $b->[SCORE] || $a->[GENE] cmp $b->[GENE] }
        @population;

      return @population;
  }

  ##################################################

  sub score {
      my ($gene) = @_;

      my $value    = 0;
      my $num_diff = 0;

      for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < @$gene ; $i++ ) {
          my $diff = abs( $gene->[$i] - $GOAL[$i] );
          $value += $diff;
          $num_diff++ if $diff > 0;
      }

      return $value * $num_diff;
  }

  ##################################################

  sub sex {
      my @population = @_;

      my $end = $#population / 2;

      for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < $end ; $i++ ) {
          my @mother = @{ $population[$i][GENE] };
          my @father = @{ $population[ $i + 1 ][GENE] };

          my ( $sp1, $sp2 );
          while (1) {
              $sp1 = int( rand($GENE_LENGTH) );
              $sp2 = int( rand($GENE_LENGTH) );
              last
                if $sp1 < $sp2
                    && $sp1 > 0
                    && $sp2 < $GENE_LENGTH - 1;
          }

          $population[ $end + $i ][GENE] = [
              @mother[ 0 .. $sp1 - 1 ],
              @father[ $sp1 .. $sp2 - 1 ],
              @mother[ $sp2 .. $GENE_LENGTH - 1 ]
          ];
          $population[ $end + $i + 1 ][GENE] = [
              @father[ 0 .. $sp1 - 1 ],
              @mother[ $sp1 .. $sp2 - 1 ],
              @father[ $sp2 .. $GENE_LENGTH - 1 ]
          ];
      }

      return @population;
  }

  ##################################################

  sub mutate {
      my @population = @_;

      for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < $#population ; $i++ ) {
          if ( rand() > $MUTATION_RATE ) {
              my $gene           = $population[$i][GENE];
              my $chromosone_num = rand($GENE_LENGTH);
              my $chromosone     = $gene->[$chromosone_num];
              $chromosone += int( rand(5) + 0.5 ) - 2;    # -2, -1, 0, 1, 2
              $chromosone %= ( 128 - 32 );

              $population[$i][GENE][$chromosone_num] = $chromosone;
          }
      }

      return @population;
  }

  ##################################################

  sub make_initial_population {
      my ( $pop_size, $gene_length ) = @_;

      my @population;

      foreach ( 1 .. $pop_size ) {
          my @gene = map { int( rand( 128 - 32 ) ) } ( 1 .. $gene_length );
          push @population, [ \@gene, 0 ];
      }
  
      return @population;
  }

  ##################################################

kwamenum86• 17 years ago

My submission: http://mandelaonline.info/helloworld.html

bmelton• 17 years ago

I was silly, and ran it in chrome.

dryicerx• 17 years ago

Sure, I'll bite at this, my submission

    include<stdio.h>
       int main() {
           for(unsigned long n = 154566997192872; n; n=n>>5) {
               printf("%c",'`'+(n&31));
           }
       }

To all who Think Themselves a Programmer

Related Stories