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A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

nixonmcinnes.co.uk

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Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#11

Post by jiggy2011 »

testing12341234 wrote: post #2

Boss: I need you to write me a program to print the numbers from 1 to 100 Me: Really? Is that really a business requirement? Any other requirements you need done? Boss: Yes, it's your number 1 priority. No, just 1 to 100 Me: Done. Give it a review and I'll push it live. Boss: No! I said 1 to 100 and everything divisible by 3 should be replaced by "FIZZ". Why didn't you do that? Me: I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for…

To be fair when doing front end work you sometimes need to make pretty patterns that do something like "print this table but apply this css class to every other row and one of these other classes to this row if a certain flag is set depending on what the previous class was".

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#12

Post by JasonFruit »

This is a perfect illustration of why programming is easy if you have aptitude for it, at least on a small scale, but almost impossible if you're not. Clive is already a programmer; he just doesn't know any programming languages yet, and anyone can learn those.

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#14

Post by mistercow »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #11
testing12341234 wrote: post #2

Boss: I need you to write me a program to print the numbers from 1 to 100 Me: Really? Is that really a business requirement? Any other requirements you need done? Boss: Yes, it's your number 1 priority. No, just 1 to 100 Me: Done. Give it a review and I'll push it live. Boss: No! I said 1 to 100 and everything divisible by 3 should be replaced by "FIZZ". Why didn't you do that? Me: I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for…

To be fair when doing front end work you sometimes need to make pretty patterns that do something like "print this table but apply this css class to every other row and one of these other classes to this row if a certain flag is set depending on what the previous class was".

And this is the problem I have with CSS selectors. What you just described is ridiculously fragile and will send shudders down the spine of any developer experienced with wrangling projects that have tangles of inappropriate coupling, but in many cases, there simply isn't a more elegant solution. Your options are:

1. Implement a sane (albeit less powerful) view hierarchy system, foregoing basically all of the CSS selector stuff, and applying styles individually. The framework will be big and unwieldy, and you'll take a performance hit, but you'll be able to maintain the client code.

2. Bite the bullet and implement it the ad hoc way, comment the crap out of it, and hope that whoever comes and changes something later will remember to read those comments.

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#15

Post by mitchty »

JasonFruit wrote: post #12

This is a perfect illustration of why programming is easy if you have aptitude for it, at least on a small scale, but almost impossible if you're not. Clive is already a programmer; he just doesn't know any programming languages yet, and anyone can learn those.

Yep, he's already thinking things through like a programmer, practice is all he needs really. I'd get him started on learning python/ruby/javascript or whatever and see if he enjoys it.

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#18

Post by adam-a »

mistercow wrote: post #14
jiggy2011 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair when doing front end work you sometimes need to make pretty patterns that do something like "print this table but apply this css class to every other row and one of these other classes to this row if a certain flag is set depending on what the previous class was".

And this is the problem I have with CSS selectors. What you just described is ridiculously fragile and will send shudders down the spine of any developer experienced with wrangling projects that have tangles of inappropriate coupling, but in many cases, there simply isn't a more elegant solution. Your options are: 1. Implement a sane (albeit less powerful) view hierarchy system, foregoing basically all of the CSS sel…

This stuff is getting solved, for the particular example you can use n-th child in modern browsers[0].

[0]http://www.quirksmode.org/css/nthchild.html

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#19

Post by dccoolgai »

kevinconroy wrote: post #3
testing12341234 wrote: post #2

Boss: I need you to write me a program to print the numbers from 1 to 100 Me: Really? Is that really a business requirement? Any other requirements you need done? Boss: Yes, it's your number 1 priority. No, just 1 to 100 Me: Done. Give it a review and I'll push it live. Boss: No! I said 1 to 100 and everything divisible by 3 should be replaced by "FIZZ". Why didn't you do that? Me: I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for…

Marketing: That's great, but can we change it so that it says now with 25% more buzz? And also get anyone who reads FIZZBUZZ to sign up for our newsletter?

Sales: Yeah, our nerds just completed this new platform called FIZZBUZZ we want you to buy. What's that? Of course it's a fully-featured CMS/CRM/DataWarehouse/SocialMediaAggregator, the developers just have to make a few tweaks...they should be finished in a day or two at most.

Re: A non-programmer’s solution to “Fizz Buzz”

#20

Post by dugmartin »

testing12341234 wrote: post #2

Boss: I need you to write me a program to print the numbers from 1 to 100 Me: Really? Is that really a business requirement? Any other requirements you need done? Boss: Yes, it's your number 1 priority. No, just 1 to 100 Me: Done. Give it a review and I'll push it live. Boss: No! I said 1 to 100 and everything divisible by 3 should be replaced by "FIZZ". Why didn't you do that? Me: I'm pretty sure you didn't ask for…

    Me: Really? Is that really a business requirement? Any other requirements you need done?
I landed a graduate assistantship in 1992 as "the computer guy's assistant" at my school's physical plant. My first assignment was to generate a fixed format file with one phone number per line. The file was to range from 1-900-0000 to 1-900-999-9999 and was needed by the campus telephone system to block all premium rate calls. They asked me to do it because they got back a 30 day completion estimate from the central IT department after filling out an internal RFP form.

I'm sure somewhere, someone has been paid to write a program that prints 1 to 100.

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