:wq is one of the most insane key combinations to quit an app and this is just hipster shit where people who use vim think they're the only "real engineers". It's just a disgusting level of arrogance and masturbation. The code is what matters, not the IDE. To focus on it as a sign of technical excellence makes a mockery of what engineers are supposed to care about (comp sci things) and replaces them with all the elegance of a high school bully belittling some other kid for not wearing Nikes.
Nah, I bet they suck, why can't they do what I've already done?
(FWIW I agree with pavlus.)
Does vim always happily tell you that its running? It used to be the default diff tool on devices I worked with and IIRC it was just a blank shell in some cases, so it might be non-trivial to work out if you're in it, without knowing it.
So yea, its probably interesting as a challenge but it doesn't prove shit, outside of "you like vim". I like Jetbrains products but I wouldn't assess someone's ability based on how someone might use the products, but rather what they create by using them.
Edit: you keep heavily editing your comment so I will leave this as-is. FYI, you are the only one talking about gatekeeping.
FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools. It is often a good sign, although not a guarantee.
> FWIW I still maintain the belief that it is usually a decent indicator of whether you have got the experience to work through unfamiliar tools
if you just said that in the first place I'd agree, but that's different. Good engineers are brave and able to just dive into some unknown to get the job done. I'm sure there's been plenty of times where we've been thrust into scenarios where we have to use unfamiliar tech to solve an issue or throw up some infra. However, personally I've never _had_ to use vi, so its not come up, but that's probably because my background is very much a windows one, not a linux/unix one.
> Good engineers are brave and able to just dive into some unknown to get the job done.
I agree. We (I) do it all the time.
Just to circle back on the "pop quiz" point: do we agree that asking loosely relevant trivia questions is not the most effective way to assess ability? I would argue it is more meaningful to be given a task and the space to solve it. To be honest, I do not know how to implement heapsort off the top of my head, but I know how to look up its pseudocode and how it works, and from there, I can translate that into working code.
> that's probably because my background is very much a windows one, not a linux/unix one.
Yes, that explains it. I find no issue with that at all. What matters is the ability to bridge gaps when needed.
yeah. I been interviewing recently and the best interviews are those most like the job, where you either go in on-site and pair with some toy example, or get given some awful existing code and be given an amount of time to achieve a particular goal within that code.
The conversations that fall out of such exercises after they're completed are probably more valuable than the exercise itself.