Microsoft Windows Linux

Linux on Windows

It's 2021 and we've seen the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.. and now I discovered Windows Sub-system for Linux, yes, Windows support for Linux. Guess it took a global pandemic for Microsoft to get Linux run on Windows!

Well, it's not really Linux, and for purists, this is more of an emulation, kind of like docker, but for Windows. However it feels fast and almost native. Good enough to support most user-mode programming languages out there. The support started from Windows 10 version 20262, so to get started, install Windows 10 and keep upgrading until this version is reached.

2020

The year 2020 is at it's mid way with today being the second week of August. There's been a lot going on this year and as a departure from the usual technical posts I decided to write something about what is going on with my life. I do that occasionally but haven't done for quite a few months now (or years?).

I'm at home, with my parents, the place of my birth, and I'm here now for around 4 good months. Since 2011, when I left home to go to NIT Durgapur, for doing my Masters in Technology after getting a disastrous score in GATE (the entrance examination), I have never spent more than 2 weeks living with them here. Here in Howrah. The twin city of Kolkata.

The Techgig C Skill Test

I used to consider myself to be pretty good in C, so I decided to try out the world's biggest programming contest platform, TechGiG (Look here: https://www.techgig.com), or so they claim to be. I wonder why I hadn't dabbled in this platform all this years since the platform seems to be existing for quite some time now. I do remember some 5-6 years ago I had dabbled a bit in the website and then stopped, I wonder why, can't really recall.

So I decided to give it a spin. I decided to try out the TechGig Skill test. Here's what I found while attempting the test.

There were 25 questions and I got 6 wrong and 19 correct. I wonder which ones I got wrong. Also considering some multiple choice answers didn't really answer the question. Also, I really wonder what a Java Question was doing in a C Skill test! Take a look:

Being the Java n00b, I might have messed that up. Moving on to one of the brilliant CHTML Questions in recent times.

That's an amazing blend of HTML and C. Amazing HTML coding skills are the feature of the tests in TechGig, since this sort of goof-up is pretty common.

Let's move on to the wrong answers now. I got this wrong apparently:

Well, I do pride myself in such questions, but seems like I have forgotten how printf handles the parse string! Well, what does ideone think?

Dear! O Dear! Ideone might have got it wrong too! Wait, maybe TechGig was wrong? Dare I say that!

Let's move to the next incorrect answer by me. Here we go:

Well, well, well. Seems like I've forgotten the basics of pointers! :( What does ideone think then ?

I think I've caught on by this point. I'm quite a C n00b also. Shall we see the next incorrect answer by me ?

This was quite tricky, so it's possible I might have messed up here. But really ?

By this point I'm convinced that the compiler used by ideone is perhaps broken. Or maybe it's TechGig that sucks?

I'll leave it to you, the reader to figure that out.

Open numbers in whatsapp without saving as contact

Whatsapp Number Opener

Say you want to make a whatsapp conversation with someone for temporary purposes but in order to do that you need to add that person as a contact first. Now adding someone as a contact is by itself a security risk as you can potentially expose your display picture and status to that person. If this is someone with whom you are involved in a transaction, then you'd not want to save this contact just for one time communication. Well, then what is the solution? How do you text this person without saving their number first?