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))};

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

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.)

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

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

?

Because: that is who posted the ad; Stephen Blum, 'lead ninja engineer @ trusted opinion, inc'.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenlb

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?

now think: how often do you see a job posting make the first page of HN? (one might say their prime sort of recruitment site...)

I'm going with calling them savvy :)

I wasn't specifically intending to make fun of the guy's appearance; he looks like a normal 20-something, doesn't look overweight, does look like he shaves regularly, does look like he gets sunlight, etc; it was just that after I tracked the guy down I was disappointed that he wasn't actually wearing a ninja mask in his picture (or whatever).

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.

(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)

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.

WHY would anyone want this?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 );
    }

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

  This line is indented 2 spaces.
  So is this one.
  This is the third indented line.

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

* not prejudiced, just not fluent in other languages.

  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')

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

  sort 'Oh,well'
  sort 'lord'

'' 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.

  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 ''

  pre

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

  All of them,
  Best,
    Stephen

Good luck with that elitism!

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

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

  #!/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;
  }

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