Code Lifespan

We all build our code as if it will live forever, unless it's a RAD mock-up and even then it still lives forever. I predict not the heat death of the universe, but the legacy code death of programming - unless of course that's what AI is supposed to fix?

Encryption

To the average programmer encyrption often looks like a joke about Alice and Bob. It seems the only way to be secure is to talk to no one. So much for the open internet...

August 2022

Assigning Numbers

Notice it says "bad data science" and not "all science". Assigning numbers to physical things is what good science is all about, but you have to do it in such a way that the numbers capture the essence of the physical thing and this isn't always easy. What we are taking about here is Godel numbering which assigns numbers in an arbitrary sequence. All you can prove using it are things about arbitrary sequences - like the incompleteness theorem. If you want to know more see: The Programmer’s Guide To Theory: Great ideas explained.

June 2022

Turing Complete

This is an over reaction! Just about everything is Turing complete - mostly by accident - and in any case my dishwasher already plays Mario and it took a lot longer than six months...
PS If you really want to know what Turing Complete is all about see The Trick Of The Mind.

Dec 2021

Modern Tools

We are in a strange state somewhere between a primitive and an advanced technology. We don't have the computing power to simply say "Alexa write me a program" so we use advanced AI to make what we have better rather than to replace it with something radically better. However, given so many programmers still claim that a text editor is better than an IDE and procedural layout is superior to a drag-and-drop UI editor, perhaps this is the reason we can't have nice things.

July 2021

Linked List Interview Problem

Interview? What interview? Don't they know me? I'm the programmer who invented the linked list - my credentials are obvious. I only write in C, I use emacs, heavily customized, and my programs are always perfectly punched onto paper tape and run without error on system V. Anyway "linked list"...so last year... And if I don't get the job you can have my head pointer, though the tail pointer is mine.

May 2021

Depth and Breadth

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Ah the joy of tree search. When you first meet trees computer science becomes real. Trees, branches, leaves it all sounds so real. Then someone decides to call them nodes and arcs...so abstract. Depth first, breadth first and, in my case, always bread first, but I am dyslexic.

December 2020

Scientist Tech Help

So, so true. Not restricted to scientist tech help either. We often get hold of the wrong idea when it comes to providing any software. When we do find out what the user wants, it's often a big disappointment. I suggest this is why we hate requirements analysis. In an ideal world we should just deliver the toy that pleases us the most...

October 2020

Old Days 2

It is wonderful - like a stream of consciousness poem. The early days had their moments. I can remember nearly freezing to death sitting on the steps of the computer center waiting for it to open so I could see my printout, correct the, usually minor, errors and throw the punch cards back in. Hypothermia was a small price to pay for an extra run in the day. Of course,  the extra sweater kept you warm the next day.

June 2020

X

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Is it every programmer's dream to design and implement a language? Of course it is. Fame and fortune and the right to name the language whatever you care to. To be known as "Father of X". To be up there with the greats. Someone will implement this language. Don't encourage, them call the court ASAP!

April 2020

 RIP John Conway

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Brilliant! What a fitting tribute and the glider moving off top right to infinity seems particularly deep. 
See: John Conway Dies From Coronavirus for more.

Feb/March 2020

Blockchain

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Blockchain is a nice idea, but the situations that need it or can make good use of it without heavy layers of machinery that make it fit the case are few. Most programmers could tell you this once they know what a blockchain is, so why did it become the great wonder of the world and the solution to everything?

January 2020

New Year's Eve 

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How many people, picked at random, would recognize "off-by-one" error? How many would get the idea that there is just one day in the year when a simple calculation gives the right answer and why it doesn't work for the rest? And they say algorithmic thinking isn't worth learning!
PS: If you don't get it you are not invited to my "off-by-one" party.

December 2019

Machine Learning Captcha 

You'd give away all that vital information and the chances are it still wouldn't let you into the web site you were trying to get to!

November 2019

College Athletes

It's not often we figure sport on our front page. The question, dear reader, is two-fold? First, why; and second, is there any currying actually going on in the description. I think its more like fluent calling.

September 2019

Cumulonimbus

Recursion, it's in the cloud...

For more about recursion see Recursion

August 2019

Spreadsheets

Ah, spreadsheets. They occupy a unique position as being the one truly easy way to get a computation done without having to know anything much about programming. This probably isn't where things go wrong, however. How many beginners would appreciate query() or importhtml()? No, it's the expert we have to fear.

July 2019

Trained a Neural Net

After this Cartoon a new era has begun - AC. I now say "I gathered all the data and fed it into the largest most powerful neural network in existance and the conclusion was..." Only later, and only if I'm asked, do I admit the the neural network was me! Long live wetware..

April 2019

Motivation

I saw a blog post titled "You don't have to program in your spare time". Motivation, it's really strange isn't it. You can work on open source or you're side project and then do the same thing at work. The question is, should they bother to pay you as you would do the job anyway?! Of course, we know it isn't like that. This is your program and that is their program. I still hold that if you don't program in your spare time, you probably shouldn't be a programmer at all.

Feburary 2019

Differentiation and Integration

Take a problem, almost any problem and if you can solve it with an algorithm then the chances are you can solve the inverse problem. You know x so you can work out y now given y, well x can be found, but often it is a little harder. There are some problems for which "little" becomes "a lot". So it is with many NP problems and it certainly is for calculus. If you have been there and know how terrible a task integration is, just stop for a moment and ask yourself why? Why is integration so very hard....

January 2019

Seashell

To continue our in-depth analysis of all that is wrong with statistics and data science. Bayes Rules! Well more accurately Bayes' rule. Above we have a perfectly reasonable use of said rule - but only if the number are probabilities. So let's take the simplest P(I picked up a seashell) - what can this possibly mean, let alone how could you estimate it in any objective sense? You don't have to move on to the others - this is broken right here.

December

TREE

Computer programmers are very much in a world of their own. The fact that you cannot say Xmas tree without the question "binary?" popping in to my head proves it. It's a sort of festive Rorschach test but instead of some black blobs it's a tree that elicits the reaction - binary blob anyone? And I can't resist wondering if the heap is garbage collected or are presents owned?

November

Modified Bayes' Theorem

This is amusing. Of course, data scientists, or statisticians as we use to call them, aren't perfect and many mistakes are made and so it makes sense to factor in the probability of such a misunderstanding into the calculation of the posterior. But, and this is a very big but, if you can find yourself a Bayesian look them in the eye, use a mirror if you are a Bayesian, and ask them
"What is this P that you keep calculating? Does it have a real physical interpretation in all cases? What is the P that the sun will rise tomorrow and where is your replication?"
Beliefs are dangerous things.

October

Sandboxing Cycle

And so it goes. A security measure is put in place. Programmers worked long hours to implement it and it's super clever. It locks down the system in a way that makes something impossible and so programmers work long hours to find a super clever  way to do the thing it stops you doing. Eventually the new approach becomes commonplace and the security programmers look at it again and ...

August/September

Software Development

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I think that this is a bit on the overly kind side. Software development is far more bone-headed than this suggests. We not only take tools and use them in crazy non-productive ways, we even refuse to use the tools that are available preferring to ride our horse backward and wash in the dust. This is no longer an art or a science; it is a punishment.

June/July 2018

Containers

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Docker is just gluing stuff together that we don't understand. Mostly yes. Git is just using a few commands and hoping that things don't go wrong. Mostly yes. Linux is just learning how to do a few things and reinstalling if anything happens. How shallow have we become. We are gluers together of things we don't understand. Mostly yes.

May 2018

Python Environment

For readers not familiar with the term "superfund site" it's a grant to clean up an environmentally hazardous site. So has Python developed to the point that it is environmentally toxic? All I will say is that software starts life lean and agile, ages to the point where the inadequacies become apparent and then descends into an obese old age where agility is a long forgotten dream.

April 2018

Making Progress

This isn't the first or only xkcd that deals with the central problem of programming and computer use. The words that should be engraved on every programmers heart are: it is always more difficult than it appears, it will always take more time than you think and the problem you solve will be replaced by something much, much, harder.

March 2018

Code Golf

Can you remember the first time you encountered code golf?  The idea that shortest program wins is completely anti-good style and yes in a sense all our programs should strive for reverse code golf status. But... and this is a big but, how often do you see variable names that are so long your eyes get tired just scanning the lines. Reverse code golf is just as bad.

February 2018

Meltdown and Spectre

The world has been worrying about Meltdown and Spectre, but I don't know why. How could a phantom trolley have any effect in the real world? Now rowhammer - that's much more scary as it involves hammers.

Also see: How Meltdown Works, How Spectre Works Rowhammer and Halting Problem Used To Prove A Robot Cannot Computably Kill A Human

January 2018

Bad Code

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There is bad code and there there is baaaad code. Some programmers seem to love to produce code that breaks all reasonable guidelines and includes as many edge cases as it possibly can. A wall may not be load bearing but we should always aim to write clear understandable code in 2018. Even if it reduces our fun just a little.

December 2017

Digital Resource Lifespan

It is strange to think that in the day of paper we got our information longevity for free. It wasn't designed into the process, it just happened. Now all the technology we use has a short life span and again it's almost accidental. Now where is that floppy I stored my magnum opus on - eight inch of course.

November 2017

Thermostat 

One day all thermostats will be made like this and I for one will be the first to welcome our thermo overlords. Of course, I will, as a programmer, be indispensible...
I hope.

October 2017

Still in Use

This is typical of the sort of error message that gives programmers a bad name. It is perhaps the worse sort of error message because it tells you what is wrong but no clue as to how to fix it. It used to be the top obnoxious error message of all time - but then along came "Something bad happened"

September 2017

Self Driving 

In my experience those random strangers turn out to be programmers, but I can see that the alternative approach has its attractions. If you get it wrong or time out, presumably not only don't you get to access the website, you also are responsible for a traffic accident. 

August 2017

Supervillain Plan

No, we are not weird. It is just that the rest of the world ignores the problem. They get worried when an hour goes missing or turns up unexpectedly when a DST changeover happens. But we know where it goes!

Backup Batteries

Ah recursion at its best. But we know why his bag isn't 90% backup batteries don't we? Surely it is full to infinite bursting point or does a stack overflow save us? Nope, it's a tail recursion.

Kolmogorov Directions

A good friend of mine once tried to give Andrey Kolmogorov, Kolmogorov directions. Of course Kolmogorov had no choice, any directions he gave were "Kolmogorov directions" by definition. Is this informational recursion or is it just name dropping...

See: Kolmogorov Complexity

June/July 2017

Unicode

The Unicode people have added some dinosaurs in the latest release so we might be in for some "glorious internet arguments". If this doesn't make any sense to you then you haven't discovered that xkcd cartoons have popup text when you hover your cursor over the image - or you are reading this on a mobile. 

May 2017

Prometheus

Here you have the problem of the value of software in a single cartoon. What we make cannot be stolen for the exact same reason. But, like fire, if it hasn't been created then creating it can be a tough job. We Make Nothing

Code Quality 3

This is having a bad effect on my code. I actually want Ponytail or someone with the same linguistic ability to describe my code in this beautiful stream of consciousness flow of adjectives and similes. I know I should desire the converse, but something in me makes me want to be bad.
Make sure you have read Code Quality and Code Quality 2. 

Sigil Cycle

If you haven't programmed in a language that uses sigils, you won't have a clue as to what this cartoon is about. A sigil is symbol that is attached to a variable's name or identifier to signify some attribute, usually but not always its type. The point is that a sigil has a fixed meaning, but the identifier doesn't. Languages such as C++ don't use sigils, but that doesn't stop you from using Hungarian notation, invented back in the 70s by Charles Simonyi (a Hungarian), which could be regarded as sigils on steroids. 

Applied Math

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This is almost not worth making a comment on. Every programmer has to know "The Art Of Computer Programming" by Donald Knuth and also the additional fact that he sends out checks of $2.56 (a hexadecimal dollar) for an error found. As logic itself has been shown invalid, and most if not all of Knuth's book is based on logic, it is now mostly errors and hence the huge reward. 

What is slightly less well known is that Knuth had to give up issuing real checks in 2008 because of check fraud. He now sends out "hexadecimal certificates" drawn on his own "Bank of San Serriffe". As very few people tried to cash the real checks no harm has been done. 

March 2017

Ineffective Sorts

Recently there has been some discussion of whether or not it is fair to conduct whiteboard interviews - where the victim, sorry applicant, is asked to write some difficult program using a whiteboard or similar. The argument is that this is unfair because in real life perfectly competent programmers tend to consult the internet before they write anything but the most basic code. So to code from scratch without an internet connection is not the way it is done in the real world.

A shorter version of this conclusion is that 99.9% of programmers would write something like the above if asked to write a sort routine without a web connection.

HACKING

I really doubt this. Given the number of websites that refuse to accept creditcard or telephone numbers that include spaces, I think the problem of removing redundant spaces is much harder, possibly NP hard, and certainly not something the CIA could have cracked in polynomial time. 

Nine

User interfaces - who can predict what works? Would you guess that a number pad doesn't need a 9? And if it doesn't need a 9 it probably doesn't need an 8. And if it doesn't need an 8 ....

February 2017

Tasks

It is still true that it is hard to explain what is easy and what is hard for computers to do. Arguably the task of checking if the photo is a bird is now "easy". There is even a sense in which it always was easy but we had to wait for the hardware to catch up.

If the cartoon was redrawn today what would be the two tasks that best illustrated the point? 

Brick Archway

No it isn't!

It is only a stupid game in real life. In software it's just fun and 100% safe - more-or-less. This is the whole point of software.

January 2017

File Transfer

Is this a solved problem yet? How can it be the 21st Century and still not be solved? Even if you do manage to transfer the file what is the chance the end user has an app that can open it. "Look for an app in the App Store" has become a way of marketing apps, not opening files.

December 2016

UI Change

Programmers look at things different. We know for a fact that it is mostly the UI that changes, what's inside stays pretty much the same. If it works leave it alone, but the UI is always up for change - usually for the worse. 

Correlation

The problem with this folk saying is that causation often does cause correlation, but try convincing a doubter of that. It's the number one get out clause that allows anyone to deny anything!

November 2016

XKCDE

Sometimes I wonder where the real hardware is? Is it really VMs all the way down or does it stop somewhere? Does it have to stop somewhere? If so, it if has to stop is this a proof that god exists? No of course it's all silly. There is only software. 

Engineering Hubris

This is the number one mistake all programmers, and I mean all, make every time they look at an existing program and decide to start over from scratch. The new project goes well at first, but then the old complexities come back and the roadrunner escapes as always.

e to the pi Minus pi 

That's nothing. In university they tried to tell us that e to the i pi was minus one. As if two transcendental irrationals and an imaginary number could equal an integer. There is no way that anyone would ever believe that or write a test for it during development...

October 2016

Old Days 

What were things like in your old days - after all, it is all relative? Where did the DVD go and remember when software came in boxes? I still write C on punched cards, so much classier. Oh wait no, that's C++.

The General Problem 

There are downsides to knowing how to program. Not many, but they do exist and one of them is that we always see the general problem. Who wants to do a Sudoku when you can write a program to solve all such puzzles? Does it take the fun out of it? Not a bit.

Lisp Cycles

Following on from our put down of Haskell and our laugh at Perl, what is the one language no programmer would dare to make fun of? Yes it has to be Lisp. All programming languages want to be Lisp when they grow up. And all programmers on their deathbed whisper "I should have spent more time with Lisp"...

 Perl Problems

Following on last week's vicious put down of Haskell, what could be better than to have a go at Perl ... But is this really an attack on regular expressions? And is the problem increment an underestimate?

Haskell

We really shouldn't laugh at each others languages, but this is a real ROFL. Well, Haskell programmers - well, you know what I mean. All that category theory can't do anyone any good.

September 2016

Debugger

The central problem of AI. 
Now all we need is an answer. 

Error Code

Error messages they almost define your generation and they certainly do define your personality -
abend anyone? What about "error in line nn" or "something went wrong". I wish I'd been born in the time of "Sit by lake".

To celebrate the return to education that happens in many countries at this time of year we feature a classic xkcd cartoon. This is one flow chart that no amount of algorithmic knowledge is going to change. It's a law of nature.

Standards

There ARE only de facto standards - discuss.

Halting Problem

That you cannot work out if a program will halt, and presumably catch fire, is a common misconception. Turing's wonderful result that the halting problem is undecidable only applies to programs that have access to infinite memory - real programs are in theory perfectly predictable.

Also see: What is a Turing Machine? and 

The Programmer's Guide To The Transfinite

August 2016

Designated Drivers

Do we really need proof that programmers see the deeper problems in everything they try to do. After all we KNOW that it is impossible to create a satnav because the traveling salesman problem is NP complete! 

Regex Golf

All problems can be solved automatically by an algorithm. Including the problem of solving all problems automatically by an algorithm. Including solving the problem of solving the problem of solving all........

Proof

Programming is like this. Most of our proofs only seem to be proofs and we are still waiting for our Leibniz. The only way we can prove that the arrow does make it from A to B is to build a bow. 

Wisdom of the Ancients

When this happens, and it happens a lot, don't you just wish you were working on something less esoteric and don't you just wish the ancients were just a little wiser?

July 2016

Tags

This could be a whole new line in T-shirts:

"Q:How do you annoy a JavaScript programmer?'

{How do you annoy a Java programmer?)

(((((How)(do)(you))(annoy)((a)(LISP))(programmer)(?)

'How do you annoy a C programmer'

30HHow do you annoy a Fortran programmer?

"You can't annoy %#@^^ a perl programmer?"

Faust 2.0

Let's face it - as programmers we rely on end users, is there any other type, not reading our terms and conditions. When presented with our requirements, as in Android permission, we have to be much more careful what we ask for. But they really don't read them. There have been a few experiments where terms and conditions have requested that users give up their first born - they still clicked "ok".  
Cartoon - The EULA From Hell

Authorization

Security theater - it keeps many of us in work. As long as the user thinks that something is for their protection they generally will, however unwillingly, put up with it. The current best stupid security play is to disable copy and paste into password fields. So ensuring that strong passwords are a real pain to use. Ah security, it has the potential to be the best scam ever... 

Logic Boat

Many programming problems are like this only most of the time we just don't realize that we really don't need the wolf. Just leave it on the other bank, who needs it?! Hey I think I just invented agile programming..

New Bug

It is an interesting idea - lighter fuel as a solution (no pun intended) to all the worst bugs we can create. The programmer, off frame, instantly understands the severity of the problem and should be able to fix it and "Little Bobby Tables" in a few lines of code. Is it the embarrassment of having committed the error that really drives him to consider the lighter fuel patch? 

June 2016

Code Quality 2

It is so beautiful, it's like poetry. To describe code in this way makes you yearn to actually read it. What does such inspired code really look like - I must know.... 

Optimization

This is also a way to upset a programmer for the entire day, perhaps longer.

A decision box with no alternative exit!

Python

This is a cartoon that you might well get but not agree with. In fact there are two types of programmers in the world those that agree that Python gives you wings and those that think that Python really is a snake in the grass. 

Tabletop Roleplaying

Is there nothing more that separates programmers from the rest of humanity than a fascination with recursion. 

See: Cartoon - Recursion

PatchPatch

It looks the same, but such a world of difference. From this one distinction comes the whole problem we have with typing - data typing not the keyboard thing. When is an image of the data the instance of that data? When you read text you are viewing an image but when you edit text you are working with something else. So don't try and patch Linux with Photoshop patch and don't edit your photos with GNU Patch.

May 2016

Is It Worth the Time?

This is where we all go wrong. What programming project, no matter how simple, takes 8 weeks or less? How many programs save as much as an hour a day or one day a week? Clearly programs always use up more time than they save and are inherently pointless exercises. I'm off now to sell my keyboard and take up yak shaving. 

Puzzle

Computers may acquire artificial intelligence but we humans don't always have the natural equivalent. You got to feel sorry for those AIs when they meet the stubborn "black is white" belief system that really does characterize the human condition.  

Set Theory

If you don't know what the axiom of choice is all about then read:  Axiom Of Choice - The Programmer's Guide. More important is the fact we might have missed a good idea. Programming by intimidation - why don't we just take bugs out and execute them as an example to the others? Or why stop there let's execute the bad programs - oh wait that is what we do!

Workflow

We live in a age when deprecation, non-backward compatibility and breaking changes are the norm when once they were exceptions. I personally blame semantic versioning. 

April 2016

Arcane Bullshit

And again xkcd finds another reason to learn to program. How else are you suppose to break everything? I'm sorry but I'm busy compiling a kernel at the moment.

Algorithms

When I look at this xkcd what goes through my mind is

"my current project is to the right of the Excel spreadsheet"

I know I'm not alone.

Alternate Currency

This xkcd used to be funny, but that was in the days before Bitcoin hit the headlines. It was recently reported that Bitcoin mining could use more electricity than Denmark by 2020 - now that is funny, but not in a good way.

Commented

 Why haven't more "programmerisms" made it into the vernacular? We say there's a bug even if there isn't a program involved. Why not say "commented" to indicate that something has no effect. We really do need to teach everyone to program if only for the cultural value and the effect on language. 

March 2016

Estimating Time

Before you laugh - how long did you claim the program you are working on would take to finish? Were you right? Even close? Next time you are asked just say - a program is never finished. Of course they will then ask how long for a minimal viable product...

Insanity

If we don't teach everyone, and I mean everyone, to program how are they going to recognize recursion when they see it in an xkcd?

Conditionals

Another good reason to teach everyone, and I mean everyone, to program - conditionals. We use conditionals all the time in everyday life but how many actually understand exactly what they are saying.

Drinking Fountains

This is the real reason we need to teach programming to everyone. Algorithmic thinking brings new ways of looking at the world and deeply influences how you behave - but not necessarily in a good way...

February 2016

Twitter Bot

Let's be honest there is a part of every programmer that wants this to be true. The idea that our creation might be something more than a neat UI is a dangerous romantic myth identical to the Frankenstein story. 

Game AIs

This golden oldie from xkcd suddenly became relevant again as the news broke that a neural network beat a human expert at Go - see Google's AI Beats Human Professional Player At Go. What is more interesting is to check up on what Mao, Seven Minutes in Heaven and CalvinBall are. It seems that games that involve social interaction are all we have left to ourselves..

XKCD Stack

Once, not so long ago, programming was about learning a language and some algorithms and then getting on with it. Today we have to negotiate the "stack" and not just one. Technology stacks have grown to become a big problem. Picking one is tough, learning it is tougher and having to give it up for the next fashionable stack is even tougher. 

Backslashes

If this joke escapes you (pun intended) then the chances are that you are not a programmer but you could be a backslash... 

In Case of Emergency

A computer is also a machine for making work. Thank goodness.

January 2016

All Adobe Updates

And I thought it was just me who got worried when a package manager needed to be updated. I guess it all goes back to the barber paradox - who shaves the barber?

Tools

This is no joke!  Can you remember the days when you just sat down and wrote a program? No dependencies, no build server, no source control, no make - no tools! Innocent days before the recursion set in. 

Purity

Mathematicians - a breed apart. You can't argue with that, but where do computer scientists fit in, and programmers? Are they the same thing? My guess is that programming is applied computer science, which is applied mathematics.

Compiling 

It used to be worse but not much.

I once knew a programmer who used compile time to learn foreign languages and I don't mean the computer kind. He ended up fluent in so many he lost count.

A wish for 2016 - the death of compile time.

Cartoon - Why Compile Time == Play Time?

December 2015

Watson Medical Algorithm

The horror of AI. It really doesn't matter if it works in a completely rational way this is how any right thinking patient or potential patient thinks it might work. 

The Three Laws of Robotics

Its is obvious that programming isn't commutative, it matters what order you write things in, but who would have guessed that science fiction and perhaps writing in general wasn't? 

Flowchart

Let us hope that this year's Computer Science Education week isn't booby trapped with this sort of flow chart. Everyone knows that only IoT and hardware types have any use at all for an infinite loop. Perhaps we should ban them. 

November 2015

Pressures

It is 100 years since an ex-Swiss patent clerk invented a theory that changed the way we view the entire universe. They don't come much bigger than that - and, yes it has to be admitted, patent clerks have had a lot to live up to. If only they would get software patents right.

DNA

Most programmers are shocked at what they see when listing the source of Google.com. It is such a minimal page who would have guessed that so much code was needed. Turning the tables, who would have guessed that so little code was needed for a human!

NP-Complete

In honour of the The Computer Science Breakthrough Of The Decade we rerun every complexity theorist's favourite xkcd cartoon. Of course everyone knows that the decision problem - can we find a set of appetizers that gets within 5 cents of $15 - is NP-complete, but the optimization problem, which set of appetizers gets closest to $15, is NP-hard. For more enlightenment see: NP-Complete - Why So Hard?

Researcher Translation

Hands up everyone who thought of virtual reality while reading this. So what is your "never to be" but "must have" technology and don't say hoverboard or flying car? 

GIT

And GIT isn't alone in this under-use of facilities. If you give a man/woman a hammer then they will use it to hammer in nails. If you give instead a sonic screwdriver - a large proportion will still use it to bang in nails and without switching it on! 

Git and GitHub LiveLessons

October 2015

Kilobyte

In these days of Terabyte disc drives it hardly seems worth arguing over the difference between 1024 and 1000 bytes - but it does make a difference. 
To find out how much see: What's Up With The Kb?

Lisp;

One of the real mysteries of the universe is - if Lisp is so impressive why isn't it the language we all use instead of the language we all admire from afar?    

Hardware Reductionism

... but people do! 
There are so many world views of hardware and software that don't correspond with what we see as reality that communication becomes difficult. "Why did the wordprocessor just lose my story?" "This is a nice computer it never crashes." 

Dyslexics

Lots of programmers, well a few at least, are dyslexic and don't ask how that works unless you want a long story. October is international Dyslexia Awareness Month and 5th to 11th is Dyslexia Awareness week in the UK. So if you know a dyslexic remember to spell a word or two for them - correctly, no cheating!

Dyslexia and Programming

Dyslexia Awareness Month Kicks Off

September 2015

Turing Test

The big problem with the Turing Test is not what is inside the box but that what is inside the box knows it is taking part in the Turing Test. This converts what was a perfectly reasonable scientific test into an adversarial contest more like a trial where dirty tricks and cheating are perfectly ok. The Turing Test

Tech Loops

We built this. We built this! 
Did we really mean to? 

Compiler Complaint

It can't be long now before there is no one left who understands this joke. Segfault? Pointers? If only to protect the feelings of the compiler.

Tech Support Cheat Sheet

Because it's "back to school" in many parts of the world it seems appropriate to remind everyone of the basic flowchart needed to get by. Anyone know how to print out a flowchart? In fact what is a flowchart?

August 2015

Engineer Syllogism

It could just as well be "programmer syllogism". How many times have you thought, or encountered someone who thought that making money on the stock market was just a matter of the right algorithm? Unless of course, wait, yes that's it... 

Progeny

Until the day, that is, that our AI progeny learn how to teach. Teaching us is one thing, but when they move on to teach each other then...

Simple

Personally I think that all functional programmers should be restricted to the vocabulary of simple.wikipedia.org - yes I'm looking at you monads, currying, partial evaluation, trampolining, algebraic type systems, Curry-Howard correspondence ...

And the good news is that Randall Munroe, author of xkcd has a new book - Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words which uses only the ten hundred most common words. 

Vet

I love my Roomba and I don't beat it up when it repeatedly head butts a table full of glasses, not even when it managed to knock one off and break it. I know it doesn't mean it because it makes up for it by cleaning up. Now I'm conflicted - do I release it into the wild? The hover over text suggests that I have to, but I really don't want to.

Ozymandias

The question, sorry cartoon, for this week is to work out if this really is recursion or is it simple iteration? If you find this too easy what about the hover over text? Extra credit for explaining Ozymandias and the connection to the first programmer and the first monster.  Join in the debate here.

July 2015

Cautionary

Can there be a bigger way to waste time than trying to get some missing Linux facility to work? It starts out so easy with a distro on standard hardware and a package manager but it ends in a time sapping session with gcc and make - and there are all those dependencies to get right...no seriously, there should be a health warning on the box.

Donald Knuth

This classic xkcd cartoon is another celebration of Donald Knuth's work - see Donald Knuth & The Art of Computer Programming. So why do we count from zero? And is it ever good to count from one? I can think of zero reasons for it...

Success

We have all been there - the deep water with the sharks. It doesn't matter what the system is. The easy change that you didn't really have to make usually goes horribly wrong. What I don't understand is why there is always a moment when you suddenly realize the original system could never have worked in the first place...

Travelling Salesman Problem

Sometimes theoretical results just don't count in the real world. Remember when someone pointed out that route planning was NP hard? So no need to even try to create a satnav then...

June 2015

Scheduling Conflict

Recursion. We live with it but there is still something extra fascinating about physical recursion. Look between parallel mirrors, point a video camera at a screen and, of course, organize a conference about organizing a conference.  In this xkcd cartoon we see what happens when you slip a negation into the recursive loop.

Headache

This weeks xkcd classic points out that virtual reality, reality reality - its all the same really. A construct of the computational processes that go on inside our heads. You gotta admit it's a great excuse!

Types

It all goes to prove that type conversions are in the eye of the beholder. Some of these seem entirely reasonable to me - but I'm not saying which ones!

Pong

It's fun but it's more like a detector for AI experts. The non-AI expert laughs and then worries about the possible coming robot uprising. The AI expert laughs...

May 2015

Automatic Doors

Programmers often have "mechanical sympathy" - well as long as the mechanism is code. In general humans are kind to machines, mostly, and don't mind lending them their feelings and intelligence. We have to hope that in the near future that machines learn to do the same.

Movie Seating

Why has no one created an app for this? Or perhaps they have and I just haven't sat next to the person who knows about it...  

Exploits of a Mom

This is a classic xkcd and it is featured here just to make sure you know it. And have we learned to sanitize our database inputs?

TornadoGuard

My guess is that you can think of more reasons why average star ratings are bad but spare a thought for their use with system critical apps. A single valid negative may be the only rating you need to see. And the response "could not reproduce" isn't really a defence, is it?

April 2015

Escape Artist

There are many jokes that claim to be \"programmer\" jokes but this is the only one I know that guarantees you won't be amused if you are a non-programmer. So remember, you escape \"handcuffs\" with backslashes - as always.

GOTO

Well the GOTO has to be considered harmful, but did Dijkstra really have a velociraptor in mind when he made his comment. Can it really be that some of us still don't understand what we are trying to do? 
See: The Goto, Spaghetti and the Velociraptor

Code Quality

We were all beginners once, but we also all, well nearly all, went through that dangerous time when we thought we had learned to program and there was nothing, nothing at all, left to learn. 
How wrong we can be and how sure we are right! 

Operating Systems

If you don't get this joke then it is likely that you don't call Linux GNU/Linux and have no idea what the HURD kernel is. If you do then you will realize that 2060 is a hopelessly optimistic date for the completion of GNU/HURD.

See: GNU Manifesto Published Thirty Years Ago

March 2015

Null Hypothesis

Ah, the perils of big data or data science or whatever statistics is called now. What always depressed me was that it was the "null" hypothesis. I was always cheering on the alternative hypothesis - well it has to be good if it's "alternative", right?

Pointers

If you know what pointers are and can read the list of numbers then you are probably a C/C++ programmer. A word of advice - don't use "pointers" in your sense in natural or programming languages.

1 to 10

One day when we have a truly high level language, or perhaps lots of them, programmers will not remember what binary is and this will not set us apart any more. Something else will - but not binary.

Hard Reboot

This week's xkcd cartoon will probably irritate every programmer. The idea that there is a bug in the code is something that bores into your brain and finding a non-programming fix is just not satisfying. Even if you accept that the timer reboot is a quick fix I bet you would start thinking up a shell script to do the same thing without the hardware. 

Insurance

This week's xkcd cartoon states something very obvious - programmers are different. What doesn't ring true is that a non-programmer would have figured it out.

Microsoft

This week's xkcd cartoon reminds us of a time when the problem was clear and we fixed it - or did we? Even if we did. it is a well known law that commerce abhors a vacuum. 

February 2015

Flowcharts

This week's xkcd cartoon mixes the abstract flowchart with real world things. If only we could figure out how to do this... oh wait, we have, it's called a computer.

With Apologies to Robert Frost/strong>

This week's xkcd cartoon reveals that programming really is behind everything and in this case we do mean everything, life, the universe. 

API

This week's xkcd cartoon makes fun of our tendency to make simple things seem complicated. Making up a complicated jargon obfuscates a simple protocol, makes what we do seem more impressive, but also makes it harder. In case you are wondering - yes there are 86,400 seconds in a day without a leap second.

Troubleshooting

This week's xkcd cartoon shows the real nature of computing. To the uninitiated, i.e. most people, it looks like magic, even if we know it really isn't. It isn't. No really, it isn't...

January 2015

Collatz Conjecture

Location Sharing

This week's xkcd cartoon is a frightening portent of quantum computing to come. Perhaps the uncertainty principle really is at the core of computing and not just an excuse for knowing the cause of a bug, but not its location. 

The Search

This week's xkcd cartoon reminds us that we might be looking in the wrong place. Data from Kepler now suggests that there might be as many as 40 billion earth like planets in our galaxy alone. So once again - where is everyone?

Workaround

This week's xkcd cartoon is the reason everyone should learn to program - even just a little bit. Without it the complex plains of the computer savanna becomes a hunting ground for superstition and ways of working that have no basis in reality, our reality at least.

December 2014

Learning to Cook

This week's xkcd cartoon makes it clear that being a programmer makes it worse when you fail at anything. Not only do you fail but the chances are that you have an algorithmic explanation of the fail.

Identity

This week's xkcd cartoon illustrates the one great characteristic of any programmer. Never solve the problem in hand. Always solve the general set of problems of the same type with the help of a good algorithm.

Documents

This week's xkcd cartoon points out an unsolved problem - users and file systems. If you are a programmer then a hierarchical file system should be as natural as recursion but.. for users? Well they never seem to know where their files are. This is the reason mobiles don't have user oriented file systems and we all know how that works out...

Crazy Straws

This week's xkcd cartoon may sound like its about wierd but doesn't it sound familiar somehow? Ah, the internet allowing us to get hot under to collar about nothing much...

11th Grade

November 2014

Abstraction

Random Number

Inside Random Numbers

CD Tray FightCD Tray Fight

October 2014

Good Code

RPS

Security

Move Fast and Break Things

Tasks

Future Self

Watches

Candy Button Paper