
Show HN: 15-question language identification quiz - DanielDe
https://quiz.triplebyte.com/language-identification/
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ammon
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!

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krat0sprakhar
Came here just to confirm this. I got all right but it doesn't seem to be
valid test for hiring. Fun quiz! :)

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shubb
Can confirm. I'm a terrible programmer but got 100%. I guess it selects for
people with very unfocused careers and no real specialism.

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throwanem
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.

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throwaway2016a
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)

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arethuza
I also scored 14/15 - got PHP wrong I thought it was Perl which is slightly
embarrassing as I've never used PHP but I _have_ used Perl.

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twic
Ditto. I'm positive that code would be valid Perl with the right libraries.

Which isn't saying much.

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dunham
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.

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sethrin
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.

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dunham
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.)

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rpeden
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. :)

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nvr219
I am not a programmer other than one visual basic course I took in college.

My score: "You got 8 out of 15 right You're in the top 50% of engineers. Can
your friends beat you? Share your score and challenge them to do better!"

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pmontra
14/15\. I guessed wrong between Piet and GLSL which I never heard about. How
many possible questions are there?

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khedoros1
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).

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ronald_raygun
Yeah, I got that problem because I knew who Piet Mondrian was, so I took an
educated guess.

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yakshaving_jgt
I got 12/15 initially. Then I followed the link to retry the test, and somehow
got 15/15\. It's amazing how quickly you can progress as an engineer.

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ynniv
That must be top 3% for a large value of 3, or perhaps a small value of 100.
How's the HN traffic doing? ;-)

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hghmn
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...

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amyjess
13/15

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).

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placebo
same score, same reasons :)

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emersonrsantos
Do one with only assembly languages and we have to guess the architecture.

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nameless912
It's all `mov` instructions. Go.

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vram22
Just did it, and got 14/15\. But see below.

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).

Anyway - somewhat interesting quiz idea.

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tluyben2
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.

Haskell vs Purescript.

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_raoulcousins
14/15\. I basically only program Python, but I guessed based on vague
stereotypes of different languages. The wrong one was guessing Java for C#.

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sleepychu
That's a pretty fair toss-up if you're not familiar with either.

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QuercusMax
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.

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viach
So the scheme is I answer questions in order to get my ego higher, you bribe
me with "you are top n", I leave my CV?

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compumike
(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.

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monocasa
Demonstrated how?

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nameless912
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.

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jadell
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!

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lojack
Interestingly enough, question 5 is actually syntactically correct Perl, but
not PHP.

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girvo
> syntactically correct Perl

Not a high bar to clear, mind you ;)

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acheron
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."

Anyway, fun stuff. I laughed when Piet came up.

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ajdlinux
Well, VHDL was _heavily_ inspired by Ada, given they both came out of DoD
contracts around the same time...

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acheron
Yeah, I know that now after reading about it. Explains why I got them mixed
up...

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still_grokking
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.

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MichaelBurge
> 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.

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boondaburrah
I recall C# being a musical reference (a higher note than c), which is why
it's pronounced C-sharp and not say, c-pound.

I would occasionally call it Db (D-flat) to be an arse.

I'm not sure if there was a formalized reasoning behind the name or if what I
heard was just a rationalisation.

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toolslive
a complete arse would reply that Db and C# are not the same thing.

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hyperpape
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.

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vram22
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?

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ajeet_dhaliwal
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.

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nobleach
Ahhhhhh! APL and Piet I didn't feel bad about (as I have never seen either)
But VHDL vs Ada! Bad miss on my part. 12/15 is not too bad I guess....

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BenjiWiebe
APL and Piet I got right. Instead I missed the newer obvious ones.. Clojure,
Kotlin, Rust.

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bonzini
The missing font is the giveaway for APL!

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vortico
Happened to get all of them, but it was getting harder at the end! Was C, C++,
Java, Python or included because the quiz would have been too easy?

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bryanlarsen
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.

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krallja
The questions are selected in a random order from a larger set, so nobody
likely saw the same questions or order as you.

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Sohcahtoa82
What evidence do you have of this? Judging by other comments, it's pretty
clear everyone got the same questions in the same order.

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krallja
Absolutely nothing. I have no idea why I wrote that.

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pklausler
Damn, I miss APL.

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Osmium
Perhaps this should be a 'poll' post so people can vote for their results?
(9/15)

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asadlionpk
My startup provides online compiler service for 20+ languages[0] so my work
involves testing every language frequently. So this was easy for me.

[0] [https://codepad.remoteinterview.io](https://codepad.remoteinterview.io)

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timwaagh
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?

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rvense
All fun and games till the plug at the end...

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DonaldFisk
14/15\. Confused Swift and Objective C.

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noncoml
13 out of 15 (No idea bout VHDL and Piet)

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optikals
Smart! Enjoy it so much!

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wambotron
I got 11 of 15, but I can only write competently in maybe 4 of them (JS, Java,
Python, PHP).

