Q 01/05

Which leader of Apollo's flight-software team at MIT is credited with coining the term 'software engineering'?

A) Grace Hopper

B) Katherine Johnson

C) Margaret Hamilton

D) Dorothy Vaughan

Answer · why

C) Margaret Hamilton

Margaret Hamilton used the phrase so that software would be taken as seriously as hardware engineering. In 2016 she received the Presidential Medal of...

Q 02/05

Which insect did operators tape into the logbook of Harvard's Mark II computer in 1947 as an actual 'bug'?

A) A moth

B) A beetle

C) A cockroach

D) A wasp

Answer · why

A) A moth

A moth trapped in a relay had caused the fault, and the operators noted it as the first real case of a bug being found. The logbook, insect included, ...

Q 03/05

Which desk companion gives its name to the debugging habit of explaining code aloud, line by line?

A) A lava lamp

B) A rubber duck

C) A houseplant

D) A stress ball

Answer · why

B) A rubber duck

A rubber duck comes from a story in the book The Pragmatic Programmer about a research assistant who carried one around to explain his problems to. Sa...

Q 04/05

Which Pixar film was almost lost in 1998 when an accidental delete command erased most of its files?

A) A Bug's Life

B) Monsters, Inc.

C) Finding Nemo

D) Toy Story 2

Answer · why

D) Toy Story 2

Toy Story 2 survived because technical director Galyn Susman, working from home with a newborn, had a copy on her home computer. The studio's own back...

Q 05/05

Guido van Rossum named which programming language after a British comedy troupe he enjoyed watching?

A) Python

B) Ruby

C) Perl

D) Haskell

Answer · why

A) Python

Python honors Monty Python's Flying Circus, not the snake. Its tutorials often use 'spam' and 'eggs' as example names in tribute to one of the troupe'...