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Comment by derenrich | Hacker News Reader

Eh, honestly I would've been similarly frustrated. The recruiter seems like they are being needlessly bureaucratic. Either they are familiar with Unix and thus should know that Unix-like is synonymous with Unix nowadays or they aren't and they should take your word.

Maybe you were a little condescending but it happens and rejecting someone on the basis of this exchange seems mad to me. If FB doesn't reverse their decision here I'd be surprised/disappointed.

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Unix-like systems are not synonymous with Unix systems nowadays.

* Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are Unix systems.

* FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux are Unix-like systems but not Unix systems.

When technology people like us are debating over this terminology, I think it makes sense to cut the recruiter some slack.

I read the exchange as cutting the recruiter slack. He didn't say "you're wrong" or "you're an idiot." It seems to me he's saying "here's how I understand what you're saying, and here's why I think my skills meet your qualifications."

Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and FreeBSD are all Unix systems. With the exception of FreeBSD they are all also UNIX, because other than FreeBSD the other three are commercial Unix OSes that have been certified and therefore hold a license to use the trademarked name UNIX.

Debian GNU/Linux is a Unix-like system because Linux is not Unix, but it is Unix-like and when combined with a GNU userland is POSIX compliant.

Do remember that we are talking about internships here.

If I have a task for an intern that requires some shell-scripting, and the intern already understands what it means to pipe commands, I put my hands together in silent thanks.

Exactly that I was thinking, too.

However, the HR person clearly filtered with "==UNIX". Hence, any explanation to him/her just wasted everybodies time. A different approach might have landed Stanley an interview with a Tech and the world might have looked different.

But then, he has plenty of new Tech contacts now. ;-)

Thanks for this lesson.

> If I have a task for an intern that requires some shell-scripting, and the intern already understands what it means to pipe commands, I put my hands together in silent thanks.

I thought we were talking about university students studying CS or related discipline?

How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands? Does this actually happen? I dropped out of uni after 1,5 years, and I studied bioinformatics, not CS, but even then I considered using pipes as basic and universal skill for any "advanced user", not even an engineer.

> How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands?

Beyond the obvious ones, lots and lots of valid reasons this could happen:

1. Student is entirely new to programming as a concept and just started in university. Not every fresh CS student has been programming since birth.

2. Student uses the shell entirely for basic commands and honestly doesn't even realize it can be used for more advanced things

3. Student is really interested in the "Science" part of CS and isn't planning on being a developer. Plenty of brilliant CS minds are awful at the programming part but extremely adept at, say, consensus protocols.

Your basic first year CS curriculum might offer a crash course in things like basic shell scripting, but it's certainly not a given. Computer Science is a very broad field and it's arguably a huge waste of time for them to teach you how to pipe commands when they could be teaching you something you can't pick up in 10 minutes, like automata theory.

Yes, it happens. And much worse.

Many interns I've been in charge of were not comfortable in the command line and most had no experience outside of windows. Writing shell scripts? The everything-is-a-file concept in Unix? You're lucky if they know what you are talking about.

It highly depends on where and what exactly you study, but in many cases you've probably been explained shell basics once and can get by with knowledge how to to copy-paste commands to install packages and basic git usage.

Of course, many students are interested in more and learn it, but isn't a requirement, so students with other interests have no real need for it.

> How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands? Does this actually happen?

People fail FizzBuzz. 'Nuff said.

A Linux kernel even though not derived from another UNIX can be UNIX. See the EulerOS 2.0 and K-UX 3.0, derived from Red-Hat.

https://blog.opengroup.org/2017/02/14/value-of-unix-open-sta...

Also: - OSX is a certified UNIX - iOS is UNIX-like (BSD based)

Due to this, when someone is asking me whether I have experience with UNIX-like I say that yes, I had an iPhone.

For which definition of UNIX? There are 'genetic unices' - systems that directly descent from AT&T UNIX. From your list Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and FreeBSD are (genetic) UNIX, since they all descent from AT&T UNIX (FreeBSD via the Berkely distribution of UNIX).

Then there are 'trademark unices', which are systems that implement the Single UNIX Specification and are certified to be compliant. Such a system does not need to be a descendant of AT&T UNIX. From your list, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX are (trademark) UNIX [1]. Note that there is also a RHEL-deriver Linux distribution, EulerOS, that is a certified UNIX.

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

RIP Solaris

In fact, the recruiter was the one that introduced "UNIX-like" term, in a reply to second resume change. Judging from that, I'd say this recruiter is intentionally malicious.

Agree. This is a recruiter-like person. I doubt he knows at all about "Unix-like" systems. He debated about words hiding his own shortcomings. I would have replied "you needed it" to the comment "thanks for the tutorial".

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