The Off-By-One Handshake: A Software Dev Interview
Description
A four-panel comic from 'Cyanide and Happiness' by Explosm.net, illustrating a classic programmer joke. The first panel shows a job interview setting where the interviewer asks the candidate, 'Can you count from 5 to 10?'. In the second panel, the candidate confidently replies, 'Sure. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9'. The third panel shows the interviewer immediately saying, 'You're hired!'. The final, larger panel provides the context, showing the two characters shaking hands inside an office with a sign on the door that reads 'Software Dev'. The humor is rooted in the common 'off-by-one' error in computer programming. Many programming languages use zero-based indexing and exclusive upper bounds in ranges (e.g., a loop from 5 to 10 would run for indices 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). The candidate's answer, while mathematically incorrect, perfectly reflects a programmer's mindset, making it an unintentional competency test that he passes with flying colors
Comments
23Comment deleted
This is the only interview where answering '10' would get you flagged as a potential product manager
Hired on the spot - any dev who instinctively treats “to 10” as an exclusive upper bound will fit right in with our for-loops…and our sprint commitments
The real tragedy isn't that they missed the off-by-one error - it's that after 20 years in this industry, I've seen production code deployed by 'senior' engineers who would genuinely celebrate getting 5 out of 6 numbers right in a for loop
This perfectly captures the industry's FizzBuzz paradox: we mock candidates who can't solve trivial problems, yet simultaneously hire anyone who can count to 9. The real kicker? The candidate didn't even make it to 10, demonstrating a classic off-by-one error in their understanding of the requirements - and still got hired. It's the software equivalent of 'we're not looking for perfection, just someone who shows up.' Senior engineers know the truth: the ability to recite numbers has about as much correlation with writing production-grade distributed systems as knowing how to spell 'Kubernetes' has with actually operating a cluster at scale
Hired for nailing the half-open interval - because in dev interviews, stopping at 9 proves you grok loop invariants better than fencepost arithmetic newbies
Interview litmus: “count from 5 to 10.” Stop at 9 and you’ve internalized half‑open ranges; include 10 and you’ll internalize our on-call rotation
We hired them because they parse requirements as [5,10) - keeps the fenceposts out of prod
в чём прикол Comment deleted
мем для джунов Comment deleted
а конкретнее?ъ Comment deleted
5+6+7+8+9 Comment deleted
1000-7 Comment deleted
Ор Comment deleted
шо? Comment deleted
шо? Comment deleted
а это не о range(5, 10) > 5,6,7,8,9 Comment deleted
а где 10 Comment deleted
первое включительно последнее нет Comment deleted
блять что это зп хуйня ебучая Comment deleted
уххх сука даже промолчать не смог Comment deleted
english plz Comment deleted
- can you count to 10? = of course. 1, 2, 3, 95, 4, 98, 2000, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 - you're hired. Microsoft Comment deleted
you forgot me, xp and vista. Some people say those aren't real numbers, but I'm pretty sure they're just irrational. Comment deleted