2 ms·

People have been asked CS questions at airport security earlier too?

• briandear 10y ago
  First, this wasn't airport security, this was immigration. Secondly, CBP officers routinely ask questions to incoming passengers -- even to Americans! Binary Trees? I don't know -- but neither does anyone else because we're talking hundreds of thousands of people per day and only a self-selecting few post their encounters on Twitter; all of the oil field workers returning from Africa probably aren't posting their every encounter with Immigration on Twitter. People having their bags ripped apart by Thai Customs aren't likely getting featured on Hacker News. How are Serbians treated when they transit the Frankfurt Airport? I have a friend who is a designer who was asked to open his computer and show some of his designs and I have had others who entered Germany/France with no problem. Most people don't post play-by-play of their travel experiences -- so we see a very narrow and potentially inaccurate view based on stereotypes and anecdotes rather than fact. All of this "anecdotes are now valid data" nonsense seems to be contradictory for a group of people who purport to be interested in software engineering and the implied respect for statistical validity that would encompass. Why is this even a story? Immigration officers ask questions to detect inconsistencies -- nothing at all new about that-- nothing even wrong with that. The guy couldn't even answer it and was still admitted. If he was arrested because he couldn't solve binary trees, now THAT would be a story.