Are you a Unix Wizard?
I found the following while going through some old materials from a course I taught a decade ago. I thought it was funny enough to type in for your amuzement. For you non-techies who may some day be in a position to influence an IT hiring decision this is also useful. Hand a copy to the candidate and ask them to evaluate. If they don't laugh hysterically, don't hire them and suggest accounting as a more viable career. Younger potential candidates may not get all the jokes but should get a substantial portion. Have fun!Unix Expertise Hierarchy
Beginner
- insecure with the concept of a terminal
- has yet to learn the basics of vi
- has not figured out how to get a directory listing
- still has trouble with typing
after each line of input
- knows that ls will produce a directory listing
- uses the editor, but calls it “vye”
- has heard of “C” but never used it
- has had a bad experience with rm
- is wondering how to read mail
- is wondering why the person next door seems to like Unix so very much
- uses vi and nroff, but inexpertly
- has heard of regular expressions but never seen one
- has figured out that “-” precedes options
- has attempted to write a C program but decided to stick with Pascal
- is wondering how to move a directory
- thinks that dbx is a brand of stereo equipment
- knows how to read mail and is wondering how to read news
- uses nroff with no trouble, and is beginning to learn tbl and eqn
- uses grep to search for fixed strings
- has figured out that mv(1) will move directories
- has learned that learn doesn't help
- somebody has shown him how to write C programs
- once used sed but checked the file afterward
- watched somebody use dbx once
- tried make but used spaces instead of tabs
- uses sed when necessary
- uses macros in vi, uses ex when necessary
- posts news at every possible opportunity
- is still wondering how to successfully reply to mail
- writes csh scripts occasionally
- writes C programs using vi and compiles with make
- has figured out what “&&” and “||” are for
- uses fgrep because somebody said it was faster
- uses sed and awk with comfort
- uses undocumented features of vi
- writes C code with “cat >” and compiles with “!cc”
- uses adb because he doesn't trust source debuggers
- figured out how environment variables are propagated
- writes his own nroff macros to supplement the standard ones
- writes Bourne shell scripts
- installs bug fixes from the net
- uses egrep because he timed it
- uses m4 and lex with comfort
- writes assembler code with “cat >”
- uses adb on the kernel while the system is loaded
- customizes Unix utilities by patching the source
- reads device driver source with breakfast
- uses ed because ex is a Berkeleyism
- can answer any unix question after a little thought
- uses make for anything that requires two or more commands
- has learned how to breach security but no longer needs to try
- is putting James Woods/Henry Spencer egrep into his next Unix release
- writes device drivers with “cat >”
- fixes bugs by patching the binaries
- posts his changes to Unix utilities to the net – and they work
- can tell what question you are about to ask, and answer it
- writes his own troff macro packages
- is on a first-name basis with Dennis, Bill, and Ken
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