2
Votes
Yes, children, it’s the BBC quiz of the week, this time dedicated to the proposition that UK schools just don’t teach enough about computer science.
All seven questions are shameful, but you should pay particular attention to question number 6.
I scored 6/7. And no, I didn’t fail on the obligatory calculus question.
————
OK, time’s up on Question 6. Nobody noticed the obvious FUD:
“CORRECT! It’s PCF – Programming Computable Functions. WYSIWYG – what you see is what you get – describes software in which content displayed on screen is close in appearance to what is printed. GNU – Gnu’s Not Unix – is the name for an operating system.“
Comments
Beware future programmers. This useless trivia may make or break your career.
Wow, one whole question out of seven, that is not (only) a rote-learning factoid thingy, and it’s not even a programming language.
Reminds me again of why I loose my temper at people thinking I know pi from memory up to 23 decimals, just because I’m a physicist. I can never remember if it’s 3.1415 or 3.1514, just as I never can remember how long my spaghetti has to cook before it’s done. That’s what books with tables (or wikipedia) is for, folks.
In the case of spaghetti, that’s actually what the kitchen wall is for … or maybe it’s the Linux kernel, I can never remember either.
Yeah, that would be the preferred option, but it’s already covered in random-decorations-that-seemed-cool-at-the-time.
Linux is a kernel? I thought it was a BIOS for Calculus! My mistake :)
I could guess that question, but I failed the one about the actors… the hell are you supposed to know that and how does knowing who never played the computer whizz improve your CS knowledge?
Well, I got the one about the actors via the time-honoured exam technique of “disassociative deduction.”
First you completely ignore the fact that the question is supposed to be about computers. This is the disassociative bit.
Next, you need something to go on. Hmm. It’s a question posed by the BBC and it involves Hollywood. Both the BBC and Hollywood are noted PC-wallahs.
Therefore, by deduction, the answer is: the actor who isn’t black. (There are probably black actors out there who star in films with a white computer programmer, but these wouldn’t be the ones picked.)
Therefore: John Travolta.
It’s obvious, really. Now, has anybody closely examined question 6? There’s a clue as to what I’m on about elsewhere in this post.
And for bonus points, can you guess which one I failed?
What kind of crap is this? That was more HISTORY than programming. Do I need to know that the Cobol (do people use it any more?) language creators nick name was Amazing Grace?
Then the last question is completely wrong… I picked
, but it says the answer is 
. Well, I guess the first is XHTML, but still.
Why does everyone need to know computer programming anyways? While the world is shifting to become more and more computerized, that doesn’t mean everyone needs to know how to program. They simply need to know how to use them. It’s like with cars, everyone should know how to drive one, and maybe do basic maintenance, but does everyone need to know how to fix it? No. That’s what mechanics are for.
7/7; looks like you better hand in those commit bits DrLoser.
I have 5/7, never heard of pizza and got the html wrong.
@Ian:
Ah, that’s why I got it wrong. I just assumed that somebody programming the BBC website would know better than I do.
Silly me. Now, where did I put those commit bits?
“I have 5/7, never heard of pizza and got the html wrong.”
You build houses with concrete. Last time I checked, loons had simply not much at all to do with houses.
Pizzas, on the other hand…
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