Cord Tech Pub Quiz #5

1. The term "bit" is a portmanteau – it combines what two other words?
2. Large language models have been said to have “sparks of AGI” – what does AGI stand for?
3. The "Escape" key was invented long before windowed interfaces. What was it invented for inputting?
4. The “Demoscene” was started by software developers who removed copy protection and other restrictions from existing software, adding their own ‘cracktros’ to claim credit for their hacks. What kind of software were they predominantly cracking?
5. At Bell Labs in 1969, a programmer named Brian Kernighan wrote a code snippet in his “A Tutorial Introduction to the B Programming Language”. This tutorial is the first known instance of a famous two-word phrase used in countless programming tutorials. What is the phrase?
6. Named after a philosopher who specialized in indirect self-reference, what is the term for a program that outputs its own source code?
7. In fully autonomous vehicles, what important car part becomes “optional” ?
8. A phrase attributed to several different people goes: “Java is to JavaScript as ham is to ____ ?”
9. JavaScript has had at least three names associated with it since it was created. One point for each name:
10. What character on every modern keyboard goes back to at least the 1500s? Its original use was related to the price per unit of physical goods.

1. What is the common name for the hexadecimal short code "#000080"
2. What is the CSS specificity of the following selector: `div.container > section:first-child` ?
3. In React applications, there are (at least) two copies of the entire application DOM. One is the real DOM. What is the other one?
4. When requesting resources across origins, browsers will send a request to the server to make sure that the server will accept the request. What HTTP method does this initial request use?
5. 2pts: It's invalid HTML to put a div tag inside a span tag. That is because divs are _____ elements and spans are ______ elements
6. One of the following is not a real media query feature – which one is it?
   1. dynamic-range
   2. prefers-reduced-motion
   3. any-keyboard
   4. max-width
7. JavaScript has 6 primitive types, name as many as you can (6pt max)
8. In flex box, if your container element has display flex and flex direction is "row", what CSS property do you need to set to vertically center its children?
9. Which of the following is a structural pseudo-class?
   1. :outline
   2. ::before
   3. :first-child
   4. :hover
10. In JavaScript, you can know if your page is being loaded inside an iframe using a single property on the "window" object. What property is it?

1. In binary computing there are two important numbers. One of them is zero. What is the other number?
2. Which is faster – sending 1K bytes over a single 1 Gbps network hop or reading 4K randomly from SSD?
3. Which is faster – sending a single packet of data from CA->Netherlands->CA or doing a thousand one-packet round trips within the same data center in serial?
4. An L1 cache reference is how much faster than an L2:
   1. 10x faster
   2. 100x faster
   3. 1000x faster
5. Which cable allows for the fastest data transfer?
   1. USB 3
   2. Thunderbolt 4
   3. eSATA
6. What’s the average internet speed across the US and Europe? (Round to the nearest 10mbps)
7. What’s the most common mobile phone screen resolution world-wide?
   1. 360 x 800
   2. 750 x 1334
   3. 1440 x 2560
   4. 1290 x 2796
8. What is the most common personal computer screen size? Hint: It’s sometimes known by a name ending with “P” – I want to know the actual width and height
9. In 2021, it was estimated that there were more than 11 billion internet connected mobile devices. How many IPv4 addresses are there? (Rounded to the nearest hundred million)
10. List every byte size from 1K to 1K-to-the-tenth (1pt each)

Answer Key

Round 1: Name that Nerd and the language he invented / 2pts each

1. Brendan Eich / JavaScript
2. Guido van Rossum / Python
3. Bjarne Stroustroupe / C++
4. Dennis Ritchie / C
5. Rob Pike / Go
6. Rasmus Lerdorf / PHP
7. Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto / Ruby
8. Håkon Wium Lie / CSS
9. Tim Berners-Lee / HTML
10. Brian Fox / Bash

Round 2: Tech Potpourri

1. The term "bit" is a portmanteau – it combines what two other words?
   • Binary digit
2. Large language models have been said to have “sparks of AGI” – what does AGI stand for?
   • Artificial general intelligence
3. The "Escape" key was invented long before windowed interfaces. What was it invented for inputting?
   • Escape sequences/characters
   • I'll accept different ways of expressing the same thing
4. The “Demoscene” was started by software developers who removed copy protection and other restrictions from existing software, adding their own ‘cracktros’ to claim credit for their hacks. What kind of software were they predominantly cracking?
   • Games / PC Games
5. At Bell Labs in 1969, a programmer named Brian Kernighan wrote a code snippet in his “A Tutorial Introduction to the B Programming Language”. This tutorial is the first known instance of a famous two-word phrase used in countless programming tutorials. What is the phrase?
   • Hello World
6. Named after a philosopher who specialized in indirect self-reference, what is the term for a program that outputs its own source code?
   • Quine
7. In fully autonomous vehicles, what important car part becomes “optional” ?
   • Steering wheel
8. A phrase attributed to several different people goes: “Java is to JavaScript as ham is to ____ ?”
   • Hamster
9. JavaScript has had at least three names associated with it since it was created. One point for each name:
   • Mocha (original name)
   • LiveScript
   • Ecmascript
10. What character on every modern keyboard goes back to at least the 1500s? Its original use was related to the price per unit of physical goods.
    • @ sign

Round 3: Frontend!

1. What is the common name for the hexadecimal short code "#000080"
   1. "Navy"
2. What is the CSS specificity of the following selector: `div.container > section:first-child`
   1. 22 –
      1. 10 for .container
      2. 10 for :first-child
      3. 1 for div
      4. 1 for section
      5. Immediate child selector has no score
3. In React applications, there are (at least) two copies of the entire application DOM. One is the real DOM. What is the other one?
   1. Virtual DOM
4. When requesting resources across origins, browsers will send a request to the server to make sure that the server will accept the request. What HTTP method does this initial request use?
   1. OPTIONS
5. 2pts: It's invalid HTML to put a div tag inside a span tag. That is because divs are _____ elements and spans are ______ elements
   1. Block / inline or flow / phrase
6. One of the following is not a real media query feature – which one is it?
   1. dynamic-range
   2. prefers-reduced-motion
   3. any-keyboard
   4. max-width
      1. any-keyboard
7. JavaScript has 7 primitive types, name as many as you can (7pt max)
   1. Null
   2. Undefined
   3. Boolean
   4. Number
   5. BigInt
   6. String
   7. Symbol
8. In flex box, if your container element has display flex and flex direction is "row", what CSS property do you need to set to vertically center its children?
   1. align-items: center
9. Which of the following is a structural pseudo-class?
   1. :outline
   2. ::before
   3. :first-child
   4. :hover
      1. :first-child
10. In JavaScript, you can know if your page is being loaded inside an iframe using a single property on the "window" object. What property is it?
    1. window.top or window.parent

Round 4: Numbers Every Programmer Should Know

1. In binary computing there are two important numbers. One of them is zero. What is the other number?
   1. One
2. Which is faster – sending 1K bytes over a single 1 Gbps network hop or reading 4K randomly from SSD?
   1. 1k of the network (10,000ns vs 150,000 ns)
3. Which is faster – sending a single packet of data from CA->Netherlands->CA or doing a thousand one-packet round trips within the same data center in serial?
   1. CA-NL-CA – 150,000,000 vs. 1000 * 500,000 (i.e. 500,000,000)
4. An L1 cache reference is how much faster than an L2:
   1. 10x faster
   2. 100x faster
   3. 1000x faster
      1. 14x faster
      2. Bonus point if you get it exactly right
5. Which cable allows for the fastest data transfer?
   1. USB 3
   2. Thunderbolt 4
   3. eSATA
      1. Thunderbolt 4 – 40Gbps; USB3 is 10-20gbps; eSATA is 6gbps
6. What’s the average internet speed across the US and Europe? (Round to the nearest 10mbps)
   1. About 100mbps
7. What’s the most common mobile phone screen resolution world-wide?
   1. 360 x 800
   2. 750 x 1334
   3. 1440 x 2560
   4. 1290 x 2796
      1. 360 x 800
8. What is the most common personal computer screen size? Hint: It’s sometimes known by a name ending with “P” – I want to know the actual width and height
   1. 1920 x 1080
9. In 2021, it was estimated that there were more than 11 billion internet connected mobile devices. How many IPv4 addresses are there? (Rounded to the nearest hundred million)
   1. 4.2B
   2. 4,294,967,296 (bonus point)
10. List every byte size from 1K to 1K-to-the-tenth (1pt each)
    1. kilobyte
    2. megabyte
    3. gigabyted
    4. terabyte
    5. petabyte
    6. exabyte
    7. zettabyte
    8. yottabyte
    9. ronnabyte
    10. quettabyte
        

Sudden Death Round

Theme: Copying and pasting things from Stack Overflow

Question

The most popular Stack Overflow answer of all time isn’t actually about programming at all – it’s a question about what tool that nearly every professional programmer uses?

Answer:

Git – specifically– how do you undo the most recent commit

Caveat:

The most upvoted question of all time has actually changed since I created this quiz. But since the new most-upvoted question is something really non-obvious, I decided to keep the original question.