I think the puzzle demonstrates they are idots, and the fact they are idiots is why they use ASP.
http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/step1.aspx
obvious ?
http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/step2.aspx
looking at the source it uses: Assets/Images/step3.png
Change that to Assets/Images/step2.png
stepthree.asp
http://toughestdeveloperpuzzleever.com/tdpe2/stepthree.aspx
hey it's Morse code !!! ...
This has next to nothing to do with being a developer. But it's easy to create and far harder to solve so hey why not...
as evidenced by a lot of the people in this thread, the first few answers may seem obvious in hindsight but 1. they need to warm people up for the puzzle, 2. everything seems obvious in hindsight, its very easy for smart people miss simple thing.
calling them idiots for making the first few questions easier and for using asp is miles away from what I see hacker news as, bit sad to see this upvoted.
Leaving aside the name-calling, I agree with the sentiment that this is pretty lame. At the point where I had to find a morse code lookup sheet I gave up (although maybe that's a red herring?) anyway I don't care enough to find out. When you call something the "toughest developer puzzle ever" you're setting people up to be disappointed and critical. I was expecting something more like this (which I think is a joke but you get the idea) http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/Puzzles#the_hardest_interview_puzzl...
I was being semi-sarcastic. I'm often at a complete loss as to why people expose .aspx, .php, .cfm, .cgi or even .html on their pages. It causes enormous amounts of trouble later when you switch engines. Go naked!
In Apache you can hide all this simply by enabling MultiViews. Super easy. Then later if you switch from .html to .php, nobody will be the wiser and all your old pageranked pages will still work.
Me too. Tried base64 decoding the viewstate value, looked like garbage to me. Also tried changing the stuff in formbox to inputs, no luck. Anyone get passed step 2?
I'm totally stuck on level 13. It's been a breeze so far (fortunately my wife wears "uggs" that one took me a minute to figure out, it would have been impossible before I met her).
I'm guessing from the title it has to do with the CSS, but the CSS just looks odd, I'm not even sure why the text is showing up with display:none
[edit] okay I found something hidden in the stylesheet but no clue what it means
Murder in the First also fits if you just go by one thing, but I have a feeling there are other clues. There is only one right answer, and it fits perfectly. Now, if I can only find it.
Rnpu zbivr vf pbaarpgrq gb gur bar rvgure fvqr bs vg ol na npgbe jub fgneerq va obgu. Va guvf pnfr, Wbua Yvgutbj (Sbbgybbfr) naq Zbetna Serrzna (Qnex Xavtug).
You don't need to figure them all out. I was able to guess based on parts. Like I have no clue what the hand is supposed to be or that mountain looking thingy.
