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What is your best programmer joke?

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Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#71

Post by Danieru »

maggit wrote: post #36
DigitalJack wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The joke would be a little better if you didn't explicitly as it was a lisp. Gotta leave a moment of epiphany for the listener.

I can't make up my mind about which of the following is better: > A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses. or > A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was Lisp.

My attempt:

A Chinese spy stole the last 48MB of the Abram's targeting system. To our good fortunes this was only the closing parentheses.

Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#72

Post by Millennium »

ojbyrne wrote: post #67
DjangoReinhardt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is the one you are talking about, but a cursory image search on Google led me to this image in a Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbee2828/92718344/ I don't see the '@' anywhere which leads me to believe this may be a fake/photoshop. Still, quite interesting... :)

http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/virginia-internet-capit... In your picture it would be covered by the license plate frame.

That's not the design I remember -like I said, it has changed- but it does look like a similar vehicle. Maybe they got a new license plate?

Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#74

Post by gjm11 »

crntaylor wrote: post #24

I know an accounting joke: An engineer and an accountant are on a train when they pass between two fields of sheep. "Boy, there are a lot of sheep in those fields." says the engineer. "There are 1,005" says the accountant. "How do you know?" "Well, there are about 1,000 in that field, and there are 5 in the other one."

The thing about this joke is that the accountant is (kinda) right. Suppose they pass one field with about 1000 sheep and lots and lots of fields with ~5 sheep. Someone who thinks "about 1000" + 5 = "about 1000" is going to get a very wrong answer, and someone who thinks "about 1000" + 5 = "about 1005" is going to do much better.

This is also why, when combining floating-point values of different widths, it is better to say single + double -> double than single + double -> single, and why the concept of "significant figures" as commonly taught in schools is dangerous.

Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#75

Post by Danieru »

ww520 wrote: post #8

There are three kinds of people in the world: the ones who understand binary and the ones who don't.

I always hated this joke because to me understanding binary does not mean understanding two's complement. Thus the joke took a on a meta-joke: using two bits to represent a binary state instead of one bit. If the joke teller understood binary in their heart they would use a proper enumeration without just using integers.

Also the proper syntax is 0b10 not 10.

Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#76

Post by Turing_Machine »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #69
wpietri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. I stopped contributing to Stack Overflow because of this. It's a classic example of cart-before-the-horse product thinking. Users aren't there to follow your orders; they're people with actual needs that you're trying to serve. I get that they don't want the site to be overrun with goofy content, because that prevents you from serving other actual needs. But there are better solutions than tasking a large numb…

Yes, the same with Wikipedia. The site has largely been taken over by people who are there simply to "be moderators".

And I see we have plenty of 'em here, too.

Re: What is your best programmer joke?

#80

Post by kps »

magikarp wrote: post #9

A Chinese spy manages to steal the last 50MB of the Lisp program governing U.S. missile launches. Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses.

  > Fortunately, it was all closing parentheses.
Fortunately? Now that they know it's LISP, they can just attack during GC.

(I know what you're going to say… but the parent joke predates incremental garbage collection.)

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