you just nailed your interview. nailed it in the way where a lot of the time, you're sort of just bullshitting, trying to make yourself seem like the right applicant, but sometimes, theres a genuine alignment, a rare time in which you maybe //actually are// a good candidate for the job. and this was, you believe, one of those times.
because really, how many random people are able to talk about how gamma curves affect perceptual quantization in different color spaces? probably not many, that's what you think.
and it also just worked out well in general. its sort of a mystery to you why companies always give you a single problem to implement that's just very slightly harder than fizzbuzz, but it's one of those good mysteries, like someone who's inexplicably friendly, and you just have to appreciate it when it happens.
what's more, and it was in C. you always fail C interviews, it simply isn't a language you know. it also hadn't even occurred to you that you might need to write something in C, and yet, by some miracle, the problem consisted of array iterations so simple you encountered only the most minor of syntax issues (yeah, yeah, functions need to be declared before you use them, whatever)
sometimes, things go alright.