source_raw_snapshot
{
"id": "955e986b-05b4-4465-ae31-be6715b22e9b",
"daily_ranking_item_id": "2dd3cd4d-c16a-4a14-a0d8-7c0908377037",
"source": "hacker_news",
"external_id": "48306225",
"fetched_at": "2026-05-31T22:01:12.608Z",
"story_raw": {
"by": "tosh",
"id": 48306225,
"url": "https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-questions-from",
"kids": [
48349969
],
"time": 1779956903,
"type": "story",
"score": 19,
"title": "The Four Programming Questions from My 1994 Microsoft Internship Interview (2023)",
"descendants": 4
},
"stats_raw": {
"time": 1779956903,
"score": 19,
"descendants": 4
},
"aux_raw": {
"external_url": "https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-questions-from",
"hn_comment_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306225",
"normalized_text": null,
"external_article": {
"title": "The Four Programming Questions from My 1994 Microsoft Internship Interview",
"excerpt": "There are no Performance-Aware Programming lessons this week because it is Summer Internship 1994 Week here on Computer, Enhance! This week will feature five posts about the programming questions I was asked when I interviewed for a Microsoft summer internship way, way back in 1994. Normally scheduled lessons will resume next week.\n\nLong, long, long ago — I believe it was in 1994, but it could have been 1993 — I had to interview at Microsoft for a summer intern position. I interviewed with four separate people, and each one asked me a classic Microsoft interview “programming question”.\n\nOf course, there wasn’t much of an internet back then, so I had no idea that was going to happen. I had no idea what a classic Microsoft programming question even was, or that they would be asking me them in the interviews.\n\nWhat’s more, being young and inexperienced at the time, I had actually never had anyone ask me to solve a programming question on the spot before. It was a brand new experience for me, and although I would never recommend this style of question as an interview today, I can tell you that as a teenager it was a tremendous amount of fun .\n\nIt was so much fun, in fact, that I rememb",
"final_url": "https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-questions-from",
"fetched_at": "2026-05-31T22:01:02.993Z",
"description": "Interestingly enough, at least two of them were specifically about performance!"
},
"selected_comments": [
{
"id": 48349969,
"raw": {
"by": "ventana",
"id": 48349969,
"kids": [
48350049
],
"text": "It's pretty amazing to me that, if your goal is to check that the intern candidate can write plain C, the questions still look pretty reasonable to me even in 2026, maybe except for the question related to colors which will probably confuse the majority of the interns (2 bits per color? how is that possible).<p>For the circle drawing exercise, it just seems that the interviewer did not do a good job hinting the author. Fun fact: a person I know got this question on their Microsoft interview in around 2016. I guess, it the question works, why bother changing it!",
"time": 1780263240,
"type": "comment",
"parent": 48306225
},
"body": "It's pretty amazing to me that, if your goal is to check that the intern candidate can write plain C, the questions still look pretty reasonable to me even in 2026, maybe except for the question related to colors which will probably confuse the majority of the interns (2 bits per color? how is that possible). For the circle drawing exercise, it just seems that the interviewer did not do a good job hinting the author. Fun fact: a person I know got this question on their Microsoft interview in around 2016. I guess, it the question works, why bother changing it!",
"is_op": false,
"author": "ventana",
"raw_body": "It's pretty amazing to me that, if your goal is to check that the intern candidate can write plain C, the questions still look pretty reasonable to me even in 2026, maybe except for the question related to colors which will probably confuse the majority of the interns (2 bits per color? how is that possible).<p>For the circle drawing exercise, it just seems that the interviewer did not do a good job hinting the author. Fun fact: a person I know got this question on their Microsoft interview in around 2016. I guess, it the question works, why bother changing it!",
"created_at": 1780263240,
"reply_count": 1
}
],
"presentation_fields": {
"title": "The Four Programming Questions from My 1994 Microsoft Internship Interview (2023)",
"tagline": "www.computerenhance.com",
"website_url": "https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-questions-from",
"canonical_url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48306225"
},
"external_url_hostname": "www.computerenhance.com",
"selected_comments_raw": [
{
"by": "ventana",
"id": 48349969,
"kids": [
48350049
],
"text": "It's pretty amazing to me that, if your goal is to check that the intern candidate can write plain C, the questions still look pretty reasonable to me even in 2026, maybe except for the question related to colors which will probably confuse the majority of the interns (2 bits per color? how is that possible).<p>For the circle drawing exercise, it just seems that the interviewer did not do a good job hinting the author. Fun fact: a person I know got this question on their Microsoft interview in around 2016. I guess, it the question works, why bother changing it!",
"time": 1780263240,
"type": "comment",
"parent": 48306225
}
]
},
"selection_meta": {
"discussion_depth": "top_comments_v1",
"external_article": {
"status": "ok",
"final_url": "https://www.computerenhance.com/p/the-four-programming-questions-from",
"status_code": 200,
"content_type": "text/html; charset=utf-8",
"failure_reason": null
},
"snapshot_version": "hn_story_v3",
"selected_comments_count": 1,
"external_article_resolved": true,
"text_normalization_applied": false
},
"created_at": "2026-05-31T22:01:12.736Z",
"updated_at": "2026-05-31T22:01:12.736Z"
}