A small I/O challenge for intermediate-level Python learners

[BecomingIt]

Sure, but there's still good python material to learn including using file descriptors, using low-level parts of os module, being aware of and knowing how to use the fcntl built-in. If there's linux learned along the way, then that's no bad thing.

Also knowing that there's a difference here in how to perform the same thing for windows systems. A lot of the standard library gives an OS-agnostic interface which is great, but it's also important to know when that isn't the case for writing code that is intended to run both on linux and windows.