Who is not aware that there’s a developer shortage? I mean, if you’re into the software industry, everybody is telling it every now and then - especially if you’re on the recruiting side. To handle that, companies come up with creative solutions - some are sponsoring education initiatives, or even creating their own. However, I think it’s not the right answer. Of course, there’s no doubt that there’s a shortage of good developers.

At conferences, it’s common to get gifts at booths. In general, you need to pass some some sort of challenge. Some of those challenges involve answering a code puzzle, like guessing the output of running some code snippet.