cryptogon.com

“Yes.”

“How long are you here?”

“10 days.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Vacationing.”

Thornton told news.com.au he got the sense he was about to be allowed in, so he picked up his bags as the officer asked one last question.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I told him I’m a software engineer. He asked if I knew Python code, and I said yes. It’s a programming language, like C or Java, and it’s pretty standard,” Thornton said.

The follow-up question was something he’d ever been asked before.

“‘I’ve got a problem, I’m trying to write a computer program, can you help me?’”

Thornton said he was so surprised he didn’t know what to think.

“I was a little bit taken aback, because I thought I was going to get straight in.

“He started to read off his computer, and I got the feeling he was trying to trick me. I just wanted to get into the US, so I said: ‘Of course’.”

He said the officer appeared to be mid to senior level, and there’s no chance the conversation would have been overheard by anyone else in line.

For the next few minutes, he was forced to prove his worth — even given a pen and paper to record his answers.

“He administered a literal computer science test. It wasn’t a savant-level one like you hear of at Google, but it was definitely a test.

“The vibe I got was weird. He asked me a question, then asked me a follow-up question to prove I wasn’t lying.