Life Much Better Thanks To Recent Elections 

                 WASHINGTON, DC--Life in the U.S. has significantly
                 improved as a result of the Nov. 3 elections, according
                 to a Georgetown University report released Tuesday.
                 "The elections have brought about a great deal of
                 positive change," the report read. "Healthcare is
                 universal, the environment is cleaner and streets are
                 safer. These new politicians are the ones we needed."


(_The Onion_, 18 November 1998)


%%

Q: Are you frequently recognized?   
A: Yeah, but people often think I'm a clone. 

	(Siouxsie Sioux, in _Details_, 199109)


%%

	For best results, avoid doing stupid things.

		-- Cliff Stoll, http://www.kleinbottle.com/specs_for_nice_klein_bottl.htm

%%

	Write once, blood everywhere.

		-- ignatz@parkview.snni.com, on Java

%%

        * gnat decides he hates businesses.

        <gnat> especially businesses who offer their nobody speakers
               as "an exceptional Management Team who are also
               impressive speakers"

        * gnat wishes TPC was more like YAPC, so he could write back
          saying, "fuck you and your exceptional management team.
          Call me after you file Chapter 11."

                -- Nat Torkington



%%

        In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul instructed send ten
        copies to the Thessalonians and the Ephesians.  But the
        Ephesians broke the chain, and were punished by the LORD ...

                        -Joe Bay

%%

        Quick, panic before it's too late!

                        -Dominus  (IRC 20010403)

%%

        Oh no!  Now I have an image of Richard Nixon *and* Ronald Reagan 
        having sex in the Oval Office. <cue wocka-chicka-wow-wow music>  
        RN: "Ronnie, get down there  and win one for my zipper."  
        RR: "Well, I see why they call you Tricky Dick." </music> 
                -Ed Dravecky III, rasseff

%%

 
        Finally, although the subject is not a pleasant one, I must
        mention PL/I, a programming language for which the defining
        documentation is of a frightening size and complexity.  Using
        PL/I must be like flying a plane with 7,000 buttons, switches,
        and handles to manipulate in the cockpit.  I absolutely fail
        to see how we can keep our growing programs firmly within our
        intellectual grip when by its sheer baroqueness the
        programming language---our basic tool, mind you!---already
        escapes our intellectual control.  And if I have to describe
        the influence PL/I can have on its users, the closest metaphor
        that comes to my mind is that of a drug.  I remember from a
        symposium on higher level programming languages a lecture
        given in defense of PL/I by a man who described himself as one
        of its devoted users.  But within a one-hour lecture in praise
        of PL/I, he managed to ask for the addition of about 50 new
        "features," little supposing that the main source of his
        problems could very well be that it contained already far too
        many "features."  The speaker displayed all the depressing
        symptoms of addiction, reduced as he was to the mental
        stagnation in which he could only ask for more, more,
        more.... When FORTRAN has been call an infantile disorder,
        full PL/I, with its growth characteristics of a dangerous
        tumor, could turn out to be a fatal disease.

                -- _The Humble Programmer_, E. Dijkstra

%%

        The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly
        limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the
        programming task in full humility, and among other things he
        avoids clever tricks like the plague.  In the case of a
        well-known conversational programming language I have been
        told from various sides that as soon as a programming
        community is equipped with a terminal for it, a specific
        phenomenon occurs that even has a well-established name: it is
        called "the one-liners."  It takes one of two different forms:
        one programmer places a one-line program on the desk of
        another and either he proudly tells what it does and adds the
        question, "Can you code this in less symbols?"---as if this
        were of any conceptual relevance!---or he just says, "Guess
        what it does!"  From this observation we must conclude that
        this language as a tool is an open invitation for clever
        tricks; and while exactly this may be the explanation for some
        of its appeal, viz., to those who like to show how clever they
        are, I am sorry, but I must regard this as one of the most
        damning things that can be said about a programming language.

                -- _The Humble Programmer_, E. Dijkstra

%%

        My cat's estimation of things probably involves himself, the
        catnip sock, the warm spot near the clothes dryer, the food
        bowl, and then me, the Monkey Butler.

                -- Sean Burke


%%

        <yrlnry> Did I mention the most recent development on my HS
                 alumn mailing list?

        <ignatz> no

        <yrlnry> Well, all week I've been plagued by these chirpy
                 messages from people who say things like "Then after
                 I sold my company for $118 million, I went to work in
                 the UNESCO office of policy development.  I also
                 write op-ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal in my
                 spare time, la la!"

        <ignatz> all must die

        <yrlnry> But today there's a message from someone in a
                 one-woman performance art show about S&M in San
                 Francisco.

        <yrlnry> And she seems a little diffident about it, like she's
                 afraid we'll be shocked, but all I can feel is relief
                 that at least SOMEONE in my class turned out fucking
                 NORMAL.

%%

        <ology> Presence++
        <ology> o/~ Nobody's fault but mi-i-ine o/~
        <ology> Zeppelin stole a lot.

        <yrlnry> Who'd they steal that from?
        <yrlnry> Some old blind black guy, most likely.

        ...
        (20 minutes later)

        <ology> http://members.tripod.com/~blueslyrics/artistswithsongs/blind_willie_johnson_1.htm#it_s_nobody_s_fault_but_mine
        <ology> yrlnry++
        <ology> blind_willie_johnson

        <yrlnry> ology: Actually I was kidding.  I really had no idea there
        actually was a blind black guy.

        <ology> You totally called it, MJD. :)

        <yrlnry> Well, sometimes I'm an uncannily good guesser, but I
        don't think I can take too much credit for this time.

%%

(A monologue on IRC at approximately 4AM)

        <TorgoX> hm, Perl running as about the only active process on
                 my year-old MSWin-running desktop machine seems
                 faster than the box at CMU which, admittedly, is
                 occupied with other tasks.

        <TorgoX> excellent!

        <TorgoX> question is whether I can set this a-runnin' for
                 10,000 generations, go to bed, and not worry that
                 it'll leak memory until there's no more to eat.

        <TorgoX> That's what Goofus would do.  Gallant would make it
                 dump its state every 1,000 generations, and restart
                 the process with the new state.  Then he could run it
                 every night for days.

        <TorgoX> since the whole genome pool can fit in about 8K.

        <TorgoX> the Goofus in me wants to just huff glue and watch
                 Springer, tho.

        * TorgoX sets the infinite monkeys working for a few hours,
                 and shuffles off to sleeeeeep.

        <-- TorgoX has quit (Leaving)

%%

        If you read a lot of Dave Barry, you'll discover that one of
        the easiest ways to be funny is to be specific when it's not
        called for. "Scrappy pugs" are funnier than "dogs." "Miss
        Piggy" is funnier than "the user". Instead of saying "special
        interests," say "left-handed avocado farmers." Instead of
        saying "People who refuse to clean up after their dogs should
        be punished," say that they should be "sent to prisons so
        lonely that the inmates have to pay spiders for sex."

                -- Joel Spolsky, http://joelonsoftware.com/stories/storyReader$222


%%

        As to the technical subject matter: I have been a student, and
        would-be enabler, of internationalization technology for about
        20 years now. In that time, I have met experts on elephant's
        trunks, on elephant's front feet, on elephant's bellies, on
        elephant's butts, and indeed on elephant's droppings. From
        rhinologists to scatologists, all share the comfortable belief
        that people outside their specialty will know instinctively
        how to make use of their little perspective on the entire,
        very large, animal.  I'm persomally more comfortable with that
        brand of parochialism than I am with the smaller group who see
        two or three neighboring parts and consider themselves
        world-class elephantologists. (My personal goal in all this is
        to understand the beast well enough to make a good saddle for
        him, so that my customers may ride him to where they want to
        go.)

                -- P.J. Plauger,  <3ba5efda$0$29744$4c41069e@reader1.ash.ops.us.uu.net>

%%

         There's a name for people who are so stupid they think
         everyone else is stupid instead.

                -- P.J. Plauger,  <3ba5efda$0$29744$4c41069e@reader1.ash.ops.us.uu.net>

%%

        A good bug report contains a destilled example.  A bad bug
        report contains a million lines of rotten code with a single
        line "this code is perfect, but your compiler does not conform
        to my wishes".

                -- Erik Naggum, <3213617417316421@naggum.net>


%%

        But can anarcho-capitalism make it rain donuts?  That is, as
        always, the real test.

                -- James S. Battista, <9ue82n$jh8$1@hermes.acs.unt.edu>

%%

        <boojum> Technically I'm pescetarian since I still eat fish.
        <yrlnry> I thought the pescetarians split off from the calvinists in the schism of 1624.
        <yrlnry> Some disagreement about whether the transfiguration of Christ was anomalous or merely eutherious.

                -- irc.infobot.org #perl, 20011206T1513

%%
        <TorgoX> My theory is that people whose parents had litters of
        20-30 kids, don't care about distractions.
        <TorgoX> Whereas I was the only child, so no I do NOT have a
        brain that can listen to your cellphone ring while you're
        yelling into the cordless, while I'm getting emails in Pidgin
        English from the self-appointed 'project manager' that say
        "halo shan can u tek a look it this thx"

                -- Sean Burke
                   irc.infobot.org #tempura, 20020108T085

%%
        <yrlnry> When was 'O Canada' introduced?  Must have been
        pretty recently---maybe in the 1960's?

        <ignatz> "A Canada" through "N Canada" were failures. Then
        MacKenzie MacKenzie, a defrocked Mountie from Lard Heights,
        Alberta, had a flash of inspiration one day while drinking
        maple syrup.
        <ignatz> The rest is history.

                -- Conrad Heiney
                   irc.infobot.org #tempura, 20020109T1846

%%

        <TorgoX> "Luigi, we're doing an article on next-generation
        garage door openers.  Call Eco for a quote.  Something zippy,
        but not too 'up'"

        <ignatz> "The garage door opener pulls aside the covering of
        our humble abodes to reveal an Ali Baba's den of disused
        machinery and forgotten woodworking projects. Like a genie, it
        transports us to our unknown past."
        <ignatz> "Thanks ummy!"

                -- Sean Burke and Conrad Heiney
                   irc.infobot.org #tempura, 20020110T0237
%%

        Bernstein also indicated how to extend his results to division
        by any finite n, but we are not aware of anyone other than
        Bernstein himself who ever claimed to understand this argument.

                -- John Conway and Peter Doyle
                   "Division by three"
                   http://math.dartmouth.edu/~doyle/docs/three/three/three.html

%%
        The quill pens at your argument table are gifts to you a
        souvenir of your having argued before the highest Court in the
        land. Take them with you. They are handcrafted and usable as
        writing quills.

                -- Guide for Counsel in Cases to be Argued before the
                   Supreme Court of the United States


%%

        "Mr. President, it constantly amazes me that you always seem
        to know what is the right thing to do."

        "Oh, I don't think knowing what's the right thing to do ever
        gives anybody too much trouble.  It's _doing_ the right thing
        that seems to give a lot of people trouble."

                -- Harry S Truman


%%

        I have to say that I find [Richard M. Stallman], once again,
        pretty inspiring. He challenges us all to think about what we
        do in moral terms. This is such a rare thing to do that people
        often don't even understand what he's talking about. But think
        about it -- he says: Decide what to do based on what you think
        is right or wrong. Here is the decision that I have made. Here
        is why I have made it.

        Who else talks that way? Not -- "Here is a way that will
        benefit you the most..." or "Here is a thing to do which will
        protect you from something you fear" or "Here is a way to get
        back at someone you resent." But instead: "Decide what you
        think is the right way".

        I find that pretty exhilirating.

                -- Dan Milstein

%%

        Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first
        place.  Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as
        possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug
        it.

                -- Brian W. Kernighan


%%

        Basically, avoid comments. If your code needs a comment to be
        understood, it would be better to rewrite it so it's easier to
        understand.

                -- Rob Pike

%%

        <brev> retardo, otoh, how does this square with Perl's
               code-is-art stance?

        <RETARDO> brev: Perl has a code-is-art stance?  That's news to me.

        <brev> well, there's a notion in perl that code is a means of
               self-expression, at least I thought so.

        <RETARDO> OK, try this analogy.  Code is like the steel in the
                  bridge.  The steel isn't important, even though the
                  bridge is made of steel.

                  If you could build the bridge without steel, you would.

                  The art is in the bridge, the way the steel is used,
                  the way the design uses the least possible amount of
                  steel, not in the steel itself.

%%

        Much of what I write was suggested by Paul Gray, and in all
        cases, he has always edited and improved my writings before
        they are published. In return, I never mention his name unless
        somebody points out an error in one of my publications, in
        which case I always say, "Paul Gray told me that."

                -- Robert E. Machol, "Lerner's Law".
                   OR/MS Today, 1998

%%

        "... Suppose we found a faster way to compute square roots or
        that we found that we really wanted the cube root instead.
        Without the use of a subroutine, we would have to go through
        our entire program, modifying it everywhere the square root
        calculation took place.  There is no better way to put new
        bugs into a program.  Had we written a square root subroutine,
        we would have to change only one program, and at least all the
        new bugs would be in one spot."

                -- Walter G. Rudd, "Assembly Language Programming and
                   the IBM 360 and 370 Computers"

%%

       ["Cranberry morpheme"] is standardly used by linguists to
       describe an unproductive bound morpheme whose meaning is
       impossible to pin down because it occurs in only one word.  The
       term comes, of course, from the morpheme 'cran' in the word
       'cranberry', which used to be an excellent example of this
       until the Ocean Spray people got to work on it. (We know that
       'berry' is a morpheme, so 'cran' must be one, too, but what
       does cran mean? 'Round and red'? 'Grown in bogs'? 'Containing
       pectin'?)  Now that you can buy cranapple and crangrape and
       cranraspberry and crangodknowswhatelse juice (in which cran is
       used quite productively to mean 'cranberry'), the phrase
       "cranberry morpheme" is a little misleading. I hereby propose
       that we start calling these things huckleberry morphemes
       instead, at least until the juice industry starts squeezing out
       huckleguava or something and compels us to revise our
       terminology again.

%%

	A monograph is, inevitably, a rather personal thing and the
	account is bound to be skewed by too much print squandered on
	things that interest the author, and too little on the things
	that may interest others.  I am sorry about this.  But not very.

	-- M.J. Wells, _Octopus_

%%

        <ignatz> it's easy to make scrapple. You just throw a grenade
                 in a barnyard and fry up the result with cornmeal

%%
        <dagbrown> Does Scheme have macros?

        <YAASASTFU> I think so.

        <dagbrown> I guess that means you can write your own (broken)
                   defun to make up for Scheme's lack of one.  But
                   Scheme lacks *everything*, which is the point of it.

        <dagbrown> It's the NachOS of programming languages.

        <YAASASTFU> It's the Pascal of programming languages.

%%

	Hah, all we poets write a great deal about love: but none of us
	may grasp the word's full meaning until he reflects that this
	is a passion mighty enough to induce a woman to put up with him.

		-- James Branch Cabell, _Jurgen_
There's no one programmer who does the work of ten other programmers. One uber-programmer does just as much work as one ordinary programmer. It's just that the results solve ten times as many problems. Programming is fundamentally a design problem. A great bridge designer doesn't do the work of ten lousy bridge designers; the great one designs one great bridge in the time it takes the ten lousy ones to design ten lousy bridges.

The best approximation is that each problem has a certain complexity and a certain size. The size determines how long it will take, and it doesn't matter how good the developers are. The complexity determines how good a developer is needed to make progress at all. If you've got only easy problems, an uber-programmer doesn't help you much (unless the programmer can find a smaller, harder problem that replaces the big easy one). If you've got a hard problem, ten average programmers will work on it forever without getting any results.

And there's one last thing specific to computers: the computer can solve easy problems for you, but making it do so is a hard problem. But solving that one hard problem (plus some processor time) resolves a lot of easy problems. Another type of hard problem is writing a magic library function that makes a range of moderately hard problems easy enough for average programmers to solve.

If you've got ten people essentially doing data entry, an uber-programmer may be able to eliminate the need for them to do that at all. If you've got ten developers working on some problem, an uber-programmer may be able to double their productivity. In either of these cases, the uber-programmer directly produces something that isn't part of the actual project, but the benefit to the project is on the order of ten average programmers' work. And, if the uber-programmer reduces the complexity of the problem to put it in reach of the rest of the team, no amount of ordinary programmers' work would benefit the project as much as the uber-programmer's contribution. Of course, if you require an uber-programmer to literally do the work of average programmers, there's no benefit at all.

Daniel Barkalow

%%%