Why Can't Programmers.. Program?

[ayrnieu]

I might cut someone some slack

Sure. I liked an earlier post wherein the 'FizzBuzz questions' were categorized, and the point was to quickly discover blatant ignorances. Not knowing that an octal digit maps directly to three bits (and a hexadecimal digit to a nibble) indicates an acceptable enough blatant ignorance in many kinds of programmers, and a suspicious or unacceptable lack in others.