I read it as we should be wary of a false negative. I was going to write that your other possibility seemed like good advice too, but on consideration, it prob

I read it as we should be wary of a false negative. I was going to write that your other possibility seemed like good advice too, but on consideration, it probably isn't, at least without caveats. In this particular example, it sounds like the problem was a lack of ready familiarity with printf. As weird as that function is, any decent programmer with a man page could work out how to do it in under an hour, I'd imagine. It would be insane not to hire someone you intended to do something like embedded development because of lack of printf experience. On the other hand, take me as an example. I've got long professional experience writing platform independent software. But that experience is in the guts of the program; I've barely ever touched GUI stuff on any of those platforms. If you assumed my long experience with Windows, OS X, and Linux meant that I could program user interfaces on all three with ease and hired me for that reason, you'd find yourself in a world of hurt.