Seriously. I have a hard time deciding whether people who post crap like that on the internet actually think in ridiculously untenably black-and-white terms, whether they are using intentional hyperbole, or whether they are trolling.
He wasn't using whatever silly garbage-collected language you thought of when you imagined the scenario. Real programmers know that error codes are returned as integers.
I'll have to disagree with you. I think Google has demonstrated success which is exceptional to the norm. As an outsider, to me it definitely appears to be due to hiring every single genius willing to work for them.
The success of individual products, by the way, is irrelevant to their overall success.
This might work. This might not work. One thing, though, is clear from Google's example: hiring a huge number of incredibly well-educated people does, apparently, also work.
My two Google friends are both motherfucking good programmers. I was in college and asked one of them his strategy for handling exceptions in his code. He shrugged and said, without any sense of irony whatsoever, "I don't really know how to handle exceptions. I find it easier to just write code without any bugs in it."
For almost anyone else, I would have rolled my eyes. For him, I nodded in agreement.
Seriously. Back in 2004 I lived in Boston and somebody posted "WANTED: World Series tickets." The email read "Please give me a miracle." I responded with "WANTED: $100 MILLION DOLLARS", "Please give me a miracle".
[Context for the uninitiated: in 2004 the Boston Red Sox defied all odds and won the baseball World Series for the first time since the Woodrow Wilson administration. Tickets to the series were probably worth tens of thousands of dollars each.]
Look, if you need a set of plates or some used t-shirts, post a WANTED. If you need a car, tickets to a major sporting event, or anything else extravagant, then get a fucking job and save up.
He's the most famous software teacher of all time. Not the most famous computer theorist (Turing), not the most famous teacher (Plato), not the most famous software writer (Lovelace), but the most famous software teacher. He literally wrote the most classic ever programming book. So around here, he's pretty well known, although I'm not terribly surprised that some haven't heard of him. I never used his books in any of my classes, but I have held them, and read the first chapter; and I've certainly heard of him.
If you ask nerds to start naming famous people in the programming context, Knuth will be in the top twenty most of the time.
I don't like DRM but I do know that for somethings the choice will be DRM or nothing.
Agreed. Every now and then I wish I didn't have to go with "nothing", but it's usually the better choice. But I never choose DRM for anything, unless it's ineffective DRM (like DVDs).
Depends on what you mean by "joke". Using polling data, Nate Silver predicted the 2008 election within less than a half a percent. That's pretty accurate, but it could still be a joke for some definitions of joke.
ah, man, I hate getting modded down when a moderator doesn't get the reference. I thought that would be a pretty universal reference. That'll teach me to put the link alongside the joke.
Heh, whenever I type something like that it's a crapshoot whether I'll get modded insightful or troll. It's a bit of each, I suppose. Today I win! Tomorrow I'll lose.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha ha! You must be daft. That's hilarious, criticizing someone for using a perfectly cromulent word in perfectly acceptable context.
Seriously. I have a hard time deciding whether people who post crap like that on the internet actually think in ridiculously untenably black-and-white terms, whether they are using intentional hyperbole, or whether they are trolling.
You are absolutely right, assuming good workers never make mistakes, and people can't learn from failure.
That's because you program inside of a safe, garbage-collected sandbox, the kind of nice playground that has simple semantics and pretty exceptions.
He was writing C.
He wasn't using whatever silly garbage-collected language you thought of when you imagined the scenario. Real programmers know that error codes are returned as integers.
I'll have to disagree with you. I think Google has demonstrated success which is exceptional to the norm. As an outsider, to me it definitely appears to be due to hiring every single genius willing to work for them.
The success of individual products, by the way, is irrelevant to their overall success.
This might work. This might not work. One thing, though, is clear from Google's example: hiring a huge number of incredibly well-educated people does, apparently, also work.
My two Google friends are both motherfucking good programmers. I was in college and asked one of them his strategy for handling exceptions in his code. He shrugged and said, without any sense of irony whatsoever, "I don't really know how to handle exceptions. I find it easier to just write code without any bugs in it."
For almost anyone else, I would have rolled my eyes. For him, I nodded in agreement.
Seriously. Back in 2004 I lived in Boston and somebody posted "WANTED: World Series tickets." The email read "Please give me a miracle." I responded with "WANTED: $100 MILLION DOLLARS", "Please give me a miracle".
[Context for the uninitiated: in 2004 the Boston Red Sox defied all odds and won the baseball World Series for the first time since the Woodrow Wilson administration. Tickets to the series were probably worth tens of thousands of dollars each.]
Look, if you need a set of plates or some used t-shirts, post a WANTED. If you need a car, tickets to a major sporting event, or anything else extravagant, then get a fucking job and save up.
When you don't want old computer equipment, you give it away on your local Freecycle. I thought everyone knew that.
NB: does not work with CRT monitors.
"your". Ha!
Hmmm, no, I think Knuth is important, but Turing is to CS what Newton is to Physics.
tl; dr
Point of fact: it was the zero we added; we already had the one when we were counting in unary.
People can be split into two groups, leaders and followers.
Actually, there are three kinds of person: leaders (Knuth), followers (most people, which is just fine), and douchebags (you).
Yes, he almost certainly honestly believes that.
And that's the problem.
He's the most famous software teacher of all time. Not the most famous computer theorist (Turing), not the most famous teacher (Plato), not the most famous software writer (Lovelace), but the most famous software teacher. He literally wrote the most classic ever programming book. So around here, he's pretty well known, although I'm not terribly surprised that some haven't heard of him. I never used his books in any of my classes, but I have held them, and read the first chapter; and I've certainly heard of him.
If you ask nerds to start naming famous people in the programming context, Knuth will be in the top twenty most of the time.
nuh uh.
I don't like DRM but I do know that for somethings the choice will be DRM or nothing.
Agreed. Every now and then I wish I didn't have to go with "nothing", but it's usually the better choice. But I never choose DRM for anything, unless it's ineffective DRM (like DVDs).
Moreover, Firefox is by a wide margin the most *chosen* browser. People who use IE rarely explicitly choose to do so.
Yes, that is what I meant; thank you for helping me be more clear.
Depends on what you mean by "joke". Using polling data, Nate Silver predicted the 2008 election within less than a half a percent. That's pretty accurate, but it could still be a joke for some definitions of joke.
ah, man, I hate getting modded down when a moderator doesn't get the reference. I thought that would be a pretty universal reference. That'll teach me to put the link alongside the joke.
Heh, whenever I type something like that it's a crapshoot whether I'll get modded insightful or troll. It's a bit of each, I suppose. Today I win! Tomorrow I'll lose.
Is it better to complain to your fellow man, who might listen, or to complain to your representative, who certainly will not?
I can see it both ways.
So true. He is a perfect embodiment of an ideologue.