Slashdot Mirror
What Monty Python Teaches Us About Computing
Esther Schindler writes "Does the computer industry seem just a little too strange? Never fear: Monty Python encapsulated several nuggets of wisdom years ago that summarize exactly what is behind the sometimes-tawdry behavior of vendors, the open source community, and marketing departments."
I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
"Let us not be down hearted. One complete catastrophe is only the beginning."
Life Of Brian.
Spam spam spam spam........
Does she go? Eh squire, know what I mean? Whhaaargghh.
Sort of a khanacademy.com digest of Monty Python sketches referenced in slashdot forums.
OK, if you want to be normal, step 1: stop quoting Python flicks.
Normalcy aside, that stuff was mildly amusing the first time if you could get past the accents.
I mean, really, what does all the Python referencing in the geek community prove other than "I'm one of you", which is supposed to be the opposite of... oh fuck it. It's a waste of time.
Oh and blah, blah, blah geek card. Fuck that too.
Now I know what I will be watching over the weekend. I was dreading this weekend with the holiday, family, and all that entails. But some Monty Python will make it pass much easier.
When my interview for a job involved Monty Python humour I should have known it was doomed...
It's fun to joke and reminisce great Monty Python skits and jokes, but when your supervisor's mind isn't on it should be a warning. The job lasted only two weeks - he was a complete flake, changing mind on specs and ideas almost daily and a 200% turnover before the upper management decided the problem wasn't the worker bees, but their manager. Some solace that was.
Still love MP, but work is work and when someone wants to just joke around be wary - your probably missing something important and the jokes may be a cover-up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Building a datacenter on a swamp.
I made a MP reference! Now you HAVE to talk about my blog posting that,apart from some lame puns, is just lacking of anything worthwhile, new or insightful.
But the title made it go to /. so it has to be good? RIGHT?
a stretch. I'm sure TFA's author has run out of ideas. Next week he may compare computing to The Simpsons. Doh!
However, a post containing both "Monty Python" and "Computing" very well may make the front page on ./.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I consider humour to be an important part of management, negotiations, sales and everything that involves other people. Of course as everything it needs to be taken in healthy doses.
It brings people closer much faster and that is very important when you want to know more about the person in less time, therefore an excellent tool to use in interviews.
moi
Nothing
WhatMeWorry?
n/t
. . . soinds fat.
Humor in a leadership position can be very powerful, but inappropriately applied it can be devastating. Like you said, its knowing when to apply it and when not to that makes all the difference.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Have gnu, will travel.
As much as I like Monty Python, their body of work is large enough that you can find support for any idea, ideology, hypothesis, etc. buried therein. It is like the people who comb the Bible for its prediction of 9/11 events.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
When my interview for a job involved Monty Python humour I should have known it was doomed...
Didn't like the boss singing the lumberjack song, eh?
Have gnu, will travel.
changing mind on specs and ideas almost daily
He was taking the "and now for something completely different" approach.
Or perhaps he was just practising for the "upper class twit of the year" contest?
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
this skit obviously encapsulates all technical support situations.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Discussions about our IT budget is like listening to the four Yorkshiremen.
'We yoosed to 'ave a server that was a shoebox in middle o' road'
"Cardboard box?"
"Aye"
"Yoo were looky! We ran a file server for three moonths on a paper bag in a septic tank"
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
So did you fart in his general direction?
Anytime I hear Monty Python and computing used in the same sentence I think of this....
LiveVault
I prefer spam, bacon, eggs, spam spam & spam, with a side order of spam.
Maybe he should have switched to lion taming.
I remember enjoying Monty Python in junior high. In high school, I began to find it a little nerdy and overplayed. At CMU, I discovered how nerdy and overplayed it could possibly be (and this is coming from a CS major!), as the skits were acted out loudly in the computer clusters every night. That was almost 20 years ago, and I'm still hearing references to the same skits.
Couldn't we move ahead ten years to Caddyshack or something?
Just never go out of style....like Blazing Saddles...the uncut version, not what they show on tv ;)
Muito boa esta materia!! http://www.lukdesign.com.br/
Voce nao e muito sperto, escrevendo issu aqui, a onde esta muito programadores que podem causa muito problemas para sua cliente.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
when passing ruffians can say "Ni" at will to old ladies.
There is a pestilence upon this land.
Even those who arrange, design and sell software are at a considerable economic stress in this period of history.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
by value.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
see subject and stop your silly ICMP filtering.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Every time I see an article that tries to tie MP to some industry, philosophy, or miscellaneous tangent, all I have to say is: "Stop that, It's silly!"
dull-eyed footstool-temporary octopus
... and it makes taking 1/3 of your life away little more bearable.
The lesson about Symbian and Nokia is one that one could have learned about UNIX when MS brought NT. And it would be true enough but UNIX sort of didn't die like it was told to exactly but spawned a bastard child which grew up to be stronger.
Life is full of near misses and one doen't know how near they are until you have strained every nerve trying. Even then you never know what could have happened if you had been just a little bit luckier or smarter or, indeed, slower or dumber.
There is so much w*****g about the Symbian UI but it's a good OS and does a lot of stuff that, e.g., Windows Phone cannot do now but makes up for with much more expensive hardware. What's crapulent is the organisation which wants everything (masses of models at different price points with exceedingly complex features in the OS to try and get around the deficiencies in the hardware, backwards compatibility with all the mistakes of the past etc) and ends up with nothing.
If you haven't learned that it's the people that matter most then you are missing the point.
This is all just my personal opinion.
For some reason I found this article quite difficult to read, almost to the point of loosing the message. Odd breaks? I don't know..
I find your lack of faith... disturbing.
Noims.
This is not the greatest sig in the world. This is just a tribute.
- off topic, real conversation between techie and secretary --
secretary: how do I do ...
techie: (sitting five feet away and not looking up from his screen), "well, look at the screen"
as long as humans do the job (I mean really any) there will be stress and if there is one thing that combats stress it is humour - of course you should know where to stop but quite frankly Ihave worked with dumb asses for more than 20years now and if they do not get an odd joke they do not get what is said to them anyway. This said it requires a certain dose of professionalism and social training to manage other people.
Matthew 5:37, "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
It's from the sermon on the mount, no less, so it's, you know, from the big JC himself.
If that's not an endorsement of binary code, I don't know what is :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All of those Python skits can be used for making commentaries about life in general. They can be used, not just for computing, but for other things (like engineering projects ... or even what happens in government). Nothing particularly singles this out for it to be teaching us about 'computing' as much as simply being truths about life in general.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
For me the quintessential MP sketch is Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook , which says a lot about the field of speech recognition and natural language translation at the moment.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
In a possible nod to Deacon Dodgson, Mr. Cleese, when asked on the Dick Cavett show about how Monty Python came up with their sketches, said:
"We take an illogical concept, and follow it through to its logical conclusion."
Sage advice. Any good programmer (at least ones that have to deal with UI's) learns to imagine what some random joe might do to his code.
When my interview for a job involved Monty Python humour I should have known it was doomed...
"Good niiiiiight, a-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding... FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE! ZERO!"
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide