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Software Evolution Storylines, Inspired By XKCD
jamie tips this mind-blowing data visualization concept from (naturally) data visualization researcher Michael Ogawa, who explains that it was inspired by "this XKCD comic. It represents characters as lines that converge in time as they share scenes. Could this technique be adapted for software developers who work on the same code?"
I thought that too.
The xkcd comic is itself inspired by Charles Minard's 1869 flow map of Napoleon's march to Moscow, a celebrated map in visualisation, and most recently popularised by Edward Tufte, one of the most well known data visualisation experts.
Why would someone, who is supposed to be a data visualisation researcher, not have seen this celebrated work of his own field before he saw a knock-off cartoon?
Does my bum look big in this?
Probably he did, but citing xkcd granted him an article on /.
Generally speak, humor is found in the unexpected. If you don't expect to see that reference in the given context, and it is made, or if it's being applied in a context that is unexpected, that is funny. At least to the observer that both gets the reference and doesn't expect it.
That said, SQL injection attacks are not only unexpected in a child's name, but I've forwarded that comic on to a number of developers of a large commercial database product (as well as many others) as a way to teach people to USE F*CKING PLACEHOLDERS. It has been fairly successful, I might add. After spending 15 minutes trying and failing to get across to them why "SELECT * FROM MYTABLE WHERE FOO = $foo" is bad, I go look up the xkcd comic and show it to them. In 30 seconds, xkcd's author gets across what I can't in 15 minutes over the phone (perhaps I could do it in person with a whiteboard to share).
Now, maybe a troll will come along and say that I'm not a very good teacher. Although I have plenty of experience to the contrary, let's assume this to be true. My point still stands: those comics teach against SQL injection more effectively than I can, thus it's an invaluable tool. The unexpected reference makes it funny enough for me to remember it, the pointed truth of it makes it a good teaching tool.
Why would someone, who is supposed to be a data visualisation researcher, not have seen this celebrated work of his own field before he saw a knock-off cartoon?
You're either a) new to IT / Computer Science, or b) too young to have experienced a revolutionary new paradigm that matches either anything discovered at Xerox PARC Labs or in general 20-30 years ago by professionals who are now "grey beards," but commonly referred to as old fogies when they point our that even IT / Computing and Computer Science has a history.
Examples include Alohanet (vs. Wi-Fi / "wireless Internet"), time-sharing systems (vs. thin computing or virtualization), IM (vs talk / irc), CU-SeeMe (vs video IM, ChatRoulette), Jennifer Ringley (vs cam-girls), Xanadu (vs. iBooks, Google Books), and Nikola Tesla (vs. "wireless power" and numerous other things he invented, prototyped, or predicted).