We (Triplebyte) actually tested a while ago whether identifying languages was predictive as an interview question (we thought it might predict general experience / exposure to lots of code). It was not predictive of anything. So this quiz is just for fun!
One could as easily argue that it selects for people who closely follow Hacker News - I got 15/15 too, but only because I'd previously seen several of the more esoteric languages mentioned here.
It seems that some of the same questions were difficult or tricky for many people, i.e. the Kotlin question or the Lisp question (which were the two that I missed as well). It would be great to see the stats on this one. Thanks!
Got 14/15 but I have a feeling it was only because I made the assumption I would not see the same language twice. Without that assumption a few were toss ups for me.
Of all the languages on there the only one in that set I had never used / seen at all is Kotin and that's the one I got wrong.
Several of them were mandatory for me to learn in college but I haven't seen since. (looking at you, Prolog and Verilog... Verilog is useful but I don't do hardware dev)
Yep, I also missed Kotlin. I technically missed Clojure too, because I rushed and hit Emacs Lisp before actually fully reading the example and all the answers.
PHP and Perl are basically like Spanish and Italian when it comes to syntax. Both can more or less interoperate with the assistance of lots of hand gestures and facial expressions.
Same here, because I knew they intersected and presumed it was a trick question. Technically, I believe it is neither valid perl nor PHP because it's missing an opening brace on one of the if statements.
PHP lets you skip using curly braces for conditionals. I've seen real-world code which used this style only once, and it was about as bad as you'd expect.
Yeah, I suspected that, but it looked like there was a close brace and no open brace. (I only noticed because I was specifically looking at the braces to try to determine if it was PHP.)
A lot of them could be inferred from what the code is doing. For example, PHP and Perl are sometimes really hard to distinguish, but I was able to get PHP right by deciding that "this ain't what a Perl hacker would write". Same with Ada v. VHDL.
Missed Kotlin here too. I also missed one where I guessed Haskell when it was actually Prolog.
I feel like this quiz was much more about how much you've dabbled at surface level in various languages, enough or not enough to remember specific details to aid in process of elimination. For example, I knew what GLSL stood for, so the picture was most definitely not GLSL. And I had at one point written Scheme and looked into Lisp enough to guess that it was Clojure and not Lisp. And I remembered vaguely enough that Objective-C still uses C-like pointer notation, for example. And I remembered enough of computer engineering class to immediately identify that the VHDL question's code fit the use case despite not having written a line of VHDL (or Verilog) ever.
I got Kotlin right, but only because I happened to see some Kotlin code (due to the somewhat recent HN thread about it, based on a post by Steve Yegge), else might have got it wrong, due to maybe thinking Kotlin syntax would likely be similar to Java.
On second thoughts, though, I guess there is no need for a JVM language's syntax to resemble Java's (much, anyway). E.g. Jython, JRuby, Groovy, etc.
15/15, not that it matters. I guess all those years of reading about languages on HN and trying out languages even when I had no real use for them was good for something, at least. :)
Piet's an esoteric, and GLSL is OpenGL's Shader Language. GLSL looks kind of C-like, while Piet looks like Mondrian paintings (for many programs, anyhow).
I know this is intended as just a fun test, but the highlight.js library used on these pages adds the language name as part of the class name on the code block...
One was because I got two LISPs mixed up with each other, the other because it was in a language I didn't recognize (Piet) and there were two languages I didn't know anything about as options (GLSL was the other).
Saw this thread yesterday and at first did not feel like taking the quiz (because I thought I would not do well, also because I didn't think it was too interesting).
But today read about half of this thread again. Then felt motivated to take the quiz (just for fun). Was not expecting more than say 8/15. Surprised to see I got 14/15 (but in top 3% of engineers -- definitely not :). It was definitely partly due to reading some of this thread first, else I would never have been able to figure out the Ada/VHDL question (at least just by guessing / logic / prior knowledge), even less the Piet one (since had never heard of it - at least had heard of Ada and VHDL). I guess the result was also partly due to being interested in programming languages right from the start of my career, and having at least read a little about many, and having dabbled in some (apart from the ones I worked in for non-trivial periods).
Wrote code in all but Piet, so knew it was not glsl. I must spend way too much time behind a computer as i also knew all besides Piet even if it was not multiple choice :)
I do think it should be harder; like when you get a lesser known language, also add the choice for others; APL + K + J for instance, or worse (for many) K or J showing either.
C vs C++ vs D.
Prolog vs Haskell vs Ocaml. Curveball there could be something like Mercury.
Biggest giveaway (as a lifelong Java programmer who's probably only written about 100 lines of C#, ever) is that C# Likes To Capitalize Freaking Everything. Java typically only capitalizes Types, but C# capitalizes Method Names as well.
It's like it was created by somebody who either likes German, or Olde-Timey English Writing.
(Note: I work at Triplebyte.) No CVs -- we skip resumes and cover letters, and match engineers to companies (bypassing recruiter and resume screens) based on demonstrated skills.
They have you take a quiz and (maybe) do an interview with one of their partner companies. FWIW I took the quiz and it was actually one of the better "fill out this survey and we'll see if we want to hire you"'s that I've ever seen: finding subtle-ish errors in code, demonstrating more than beginner knowledge in a couple of languages, and a pretty solid set of design questions. I didn't feel out of my league, but I also didn't feel like my intelligence was insulted.
11/15 A few I missed because I didn't know enough to tell them apart (eg Kotlin/Swift.) Others were process of elimination or a straight up guess. And I didn't even know there was an abstract visual programming language!
Stupidly, I missed Ruby/Python from going too quickly right at the beginning. Then missed Ada/VHDL from never having heard of VHDL, and I thought "oh, looks like Ada."
Too easy (15/15). Had only once to look a second time at the code snippet (elisp vs. clojure, but there were [] around the param, that made it clear).
Would be more fun if they would implement the same code snippet in different (but maybe quite similar) languages and one would have to label the (lets say six for an interesting difficulty level) snippets.
> Just as the ++ in the name C++ is intended to imply that C++ is a step above C, the # in the name C# is intended to resemble two ++ operators stacked on each other, indicating that C# is a step above C++.
I've sort of followed C# since it was released, and never realized this.
It's a bit of a giveaway that R included domain specific terminology: otherwise it would've been hopeless for me. Maybe the same for VHDL, but I know so little about it that I don't even know if you could write code without domain specific elements.
BTW, what is the reason for the Piet question not showing any code or image (until you answer the question)? Is it somehow related to how the language works, or some feature of it?
Surprised how the ones I'm familiar with jump out instantaneously, only got 10/15 but should have got 11, silly mistake confusing ruby and python. Hadn't even heard of some of the ones at the end.
I thought the end was easier than the middle -- the languages there were older and more obscure to a 2017 audience, but that also generally made them much more distinctive.
it was a fun test. i got like 13/15. not too bad i think considering the people who are on this site are making mistakes as well. maybe i deserve a higher salary?
