Far be it from me to disagree with Kernighan but... when I think of "clever" code, I think of things like Duff's device. That's clever as hell. It's also perfectly debuggable. When I deal with undebuggable code in the wild, it's usually due to people doing things like declaring global (sorry, "public static") variables that connect to live databases and start downloading definition tables into memory before the code can run.

> They were responsive, professional, and took the findings seriously, patching the issues promptly.

The "issue" is that they're returning the entire PNR dataset to the front-end in the first place. He doesn't detail how they fixed it, but there's no reason in the world that this entire dataset should be dumped into Javascript. I got into pretty heated arguments with folks about this at Travelocity and this shit is exactly why I was so adamant.

I did it in my head but got 4 (3 * 3 - 5), so I fail, too. Hopefully I'd be paying closer attention if I was actually applying for a job.

where did your multiplication come from?

From not paying close attention :)

> about text editors

I get where you're coming from, but the analogy sort of breaks down here - those of us who work with text editors all the time love our tool of choice because it has features that make our lives easier. I can't see how a font could have or lack a "feature".

> I can't see how a font could have or lack a "feature"

Oh boy. Everything about a typeface is a feature, and many of them are functional and not just stylistic choices.

- Monospace glyphs are a feature almost everyone here is familiar with and appreciates.

- Serifs are a feature for readability

- Open apertures like in humanist fonts are more readable

- Closed apertures in grotesque fonts make the text more dense

- Stroke contrast

- X-height

- Variety of weights

- Ligatures

- Dotted or slashed zero to distinguish it from capital O

- Features to distinguish capital I and lowercase l glyphs

...these are all features of a typeface.

Not to mention all the far-out OpenType features.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographic_features

I remember him as Meathead, and my 22-year-old son remembers him as the dad from Wolf of Wall Street. It's really amazing how many generations his work spans.

"Why is government so inefficient?"

"I would never hire anybody who worked for the government during an administration I didn't vote for!"

> It is not economically sound to continuously import technically‑skilled people

Interesting take.

Reminds me of Java's GridBagLayout layout manager, which was practically unpredictable in actual use.

> Why does the backlog need to be prioritised?

We know _why_ you want to know how long everything will take. It seems to escape these guy's attention that if software development was as predictable as they seem to insist it must be, they could be replaced with a spreadsheet.

I bought Microsoft Word, years ago, before it was "licensed". However, it auto-updated itself with my permission from time to time. A few weeks ago, I went to edit a document and was presented with a pop-up that said I needed to update my license fee in order to be allowed to make modifications to it.

This is doubly frustrating when Word is the standard for resumes.