It was once fashionable to ask "pet" interview questions of software engineers. These questions usually demanded that the applicant know—or figure out on the fly—some algorithm with an intermediate- or advanced technique, like recursion. One variation on the "pet question" interview would seem to ask for an algorithm, but in actuality there would be a quick-and-dirty "hack" such as using a regex to perform replacements in a text file. "Alice and Bobbie and Sharleen and Dyck" is a fable that reverses the second interview type: The interviewer is looking for a pushdown automaton, and the interviewee presents the quick-and-dirty hack. https://raganwald.com/2018/11/14/dyck-joke.html p.s. Yes I have written balanced parentheses code live in an interview. I got the job anyways.