True story: long time ago, I was once interviewing a guy, and wanted to check his coding skills. Asked him to write some simple C function, doing some simple al

True story: long time ago, I was once interviewing a guy, and wanted to check his coding skills. Asked him to write some simple C function, doing some simple algorithm. Let the guy use my PC as I watched him (did I say it was very long time ago?). To my surprise, instead of writing C code right away, the guy went to Far on my PC, with a blink of an eye, with hot keys, found some existing files on my disk, glanced through them, returned to file editor and wrote that function. When I asked what that was, why did he have to dive into my C files, he admitted he doesn’t care to remember C syntax, and just had to look it up quickly to write his function. It turned out he was mostly writing all of his code in x86 assembly, and a pretty complex code. His main project in assembly was a compressor that was faster and more efficient than RAR, which at that time was at the top. I tried it and that was true. Many year later, the guys went on to win Hutter prize, and kept improving his own record year after year. I admire his grit and persistence, and how he keeps discovering new ways to improve his algorithms. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he maintains them in pure assembly (he did originally). I did hire the guy, and enjoyed working with him.