Was Einstein winking when he said this?
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I live in the Netherlands, but even the stuff that's legal here doesn't result in people talking the guff you're spouting.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
You know the crap at the end of spam, this guy is the author!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further. Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
B. Clay Shannon wrote:
the ending clause is redundant,
Because some people try to make things too simple. Management, for example, when in their simple mind, something should be doable in a day, when it actually takes weeks or months. But what he's really getting at is the balance between complexity and simplicity. It's the balance we all face as programmers and some of us are totally ignorant of. VB / Javascript / Ruby / Python / et al. programmer: cut and paste the code Everyone else: Oh, I'm about to duplicate this code, let me make a function. VB / Javascript / Ruby / Python / et al. programmer: Wow, look at my cool function, it's 10000 lines long! Everyone else: Ew, this is getting gross, let me break this apart so it's readable and self-documenting. And so forth. Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project! Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
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Please... Obfuscation newbie-style is far more advanced. In high school a (female, good-loking) classmate asked me for help for the laboratory classwork. Leaving apart the fact that there were over 40 variables and the task was trivial - they were named... A, B, C, D, E ... AA, AB, AC... Of course without comments or anything. More obfuscated than THAT? Her brain.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
When I was as Comp.Sci student, one of the professors was really pushing 'descriptive variable names' to the extreme. I happened to look over the shoulder of the brightest guy in our class while he was working on a programming homework: His integer variables were named I00, I01, I02, ..., reals were R00, R01, ... and so on. I was shocked: "Do you really think Prof. C will accept that?" "Oh, no", he replied, "Before I hand it in to Prof C., I will do a textual substitute, replacing all I01s with 'NumberOfOilCans', all R04s with 'WeightOfEachCanWhenEpty' and so on. But I couldn't possibly work with that kind of names - think of all that extra typing, how long that would take!" His mental capacity was so that he didn't need any 'descriptive names' - he could easily map from R04 to the concept of WeightOfEachCanWhenEmpty without any visual reminder. Descriptive names are for people with less mental capacity :-) The only negative thing about his style is that after making his substitutions, the code lines would be 100, maybe 120, maybe 130 characters long. (When substituting, he used really long descriptive names). End-of-line comments would of course end up mis-aligned - but this was in the Fortran days when EOL-comments were non-standard.
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When I was as Comp.Sci student, one of the professors was really pushing 'descriptive variable names' to the extreme. I happened to look over the shoulder of the brightest guy in our class while he was working on a programming homework: His integer variables were named I00, I01, I02, ..., reals were R00, R01, ... and so on. I was shocked: "Do you really think Prof. C will accept that?" "Oh, no", he replied, "Before I hand it in to Prof C., I will do a textual substitute, replacing all I01s with 'NumberOfOilCans', all R04s with 'WeightOfEachCanWhenEpty' and so on. But I couldn't possibly work with that kind of names - think of all that extra typing, how long that would take!" His mental capacity was so that he didn't need any 'descriptive names' - he could easily map from R04 to the concept of WeightOfEachCanWhenEmpty without any visual reminder. Descriptive names are for people with less mental capacity :-) The only negative thing about his style is that after making his substitutions, the code lines would be 100, maybe 120, maybe 130 characters long. (When substituting, he used really long descriptive names). End-of-line comments would of course end up mis-aligned - but this was in the Fortran days when EOL-comments were non-standard.
Both are good for code that won't be used ever after. You just gave me a terrible idea: if I'll ever teach, I will make the students work on their code of 2-3 months before. THAT will teach them the importance of code readability :D
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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Both are good for code that won't be used ever after. You just gave me a terrible idea: if I'll ever teach, I will make the students work on their code of 2-3 months before. THAT will teach them the importance of code readability :D
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
When I was teaching computer network software to last-year college students, I made myself the hate object of the year when I organized the group programming assignment in four stages throughout the full semester course: After each stage, each group handed their work over to another group, and were given another group's work as a base for the next stage. Students hated revealing their own deficiencies to fellow students, and they hated having to struggle with that terrible code written by their completely incomptetent fellow students... Telling them that in a few months, this would be the normal working situation for them didn't really make it. I have no regrets, even though the students hated me for it. An essential element in learning to code is learning to handle code from other programmers, and to make your own code so good that there is no reason to feel ashamed, no matter who reads it - both in plain readability and in other quality aspects.
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When I was teaching computer network software to last-year college students, I made myself the hate object of the year when I organized the group programming assignment in four stages throughout the full semester course: After each stage, each group handed their work over to another group, and were given another group's work as a base for the next stage. Students hated revealing their own deficiencies to fellow students, and they hated having to struggle with that terrible code written by their completely incomptetent fellow students... Telling them that in a few months, this would be the normal working situation for them didn't really make it. I have no regrets, even though the students hated me for it. An essential element in learning to code is learning to handle code from other programmers, and to make your own code so good that there is no reason to feel ashamed, no matter who reads it - both in plain readability and in other quality aspects.
You have ALL my respect! :thumbsup: Also, a teacher can be hated for two reason: either he's incompetent or he's evil. Evil teachers are the only ones that really teach anything.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further. Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
Quote:
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." (Letter 16, 1657)” ― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters
Probably Einstein had the same issue :-D
Paulo Gomes Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. —Bill Gates
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When I was as Comp.Sci student, one of the professors was really pushing 'descriptive variable names' to the extreme. I happened to look over the shoulder of the brightest guy in our class while he was working on a programming homework: His integer variables were named I00, I01, I02, ..., reals were R00, R01, ... and so on. I was shocked: "Do you really think Prof. C will accept that?" "Oh, no", he replied, "Before I hand it in to Prof C., I will do a textual substitute, replacing all I01s with 'NumberOfOilCans', all R04s with 'WeightOfEachCanWhenEpty' and so on. But I couldn't possibly work with that kind of names - think of all that extra typing, how long that would take!" His mental capacity was so that he didn't need any 'descriptive names' - he could easily map from R04 to the concept of WeightOfEachCanWhenEmpty without any visual reminder. Descriptive names are for people with less mental capacity :-) The only negative thing about his style is that after making his substitutions, the code lines would be 100, maybe 120, maybe 130 characters long. (When substituting, he used really long descriptive names). End-of-line comments would of course end up mis-aligned - but this was in the Fortran days when EOL-comments were non-standard.
Ah, Fortran... Where we remember this phrase: God is Real, unless declared otherwise!!!
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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further. Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
He and Yogi Berea hung out together ... a lot, so I'm thinking some entanglement occurred?
Nothing is impossible, we just don't know the way of it yet.
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When I was as Comp.Sci student, one of the professors was really pushing 'descriptive variable names' to the extreme. I happened to look over the shoulder of the brightest guy in our class while he was working on a programming homework: His integer variables were named I00, I01, I02, ..., reals were R00, R01, ... and so on. I was shocked: "Do you really think Prof. C will accept that?" "Oh, no", he replied, "Before I hand it in to Prof C., I will do a textual substitute, replacing all I01s with 'NumberOfOilCans', all R04s with 'WeightOfEachCanWhenEpty' and so on. But I couldn't possibly work with that kind of names - think of all that extra typing, how long that would take!" His mental capacity was so that he didn't need any 'descriptive names' - he could easily map from R04 to the concept of WeightOfEachCanWhenEmpty without any visual reminder. Descriptive names are for people with less mental capacity :-) The only negative thing about his style is that after making his substitutions, the code lines would be 100, maybe 120, maybe 130 characters long. (When substituting, he used really long descriptive names). End-of-line comments would of course end up mis-aligned - but this was in the Fortran days when EOL-comments were non-standard.
One of my first COBOL instructors would give us an assignment, due in 2 weeks. a couple of us would complete it in the next couple days... about halfway thru the time-frame... he'd change what he wanted us to do. We thought he was too dumb to make up his problems ahead of time little did we realize - he was teaching us what life as a programmer was really about...
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Both are good for code that won't be used ever after. You just gave me a terrible idea: if I'll ever teach, I will make the students work on their code of 2-3 months before. THAT will teach them the importance of code readability :D
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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Please... Obfuscation newbie-style is far more advanced. In high school a (female, good-loking) classmate asked me for help for the laboratory classwork. Leaving apart the fact that there were over 40 variables and the task was trivial - they were named... A, B, C, D, E ... AA, AB, AC... Of course without comments or anything. More obfuscated than THAT? Her brain.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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den2k88 wrote: More obfuscated than THAT? Her brain. But you already said she was female. ;)
Yeah, the usual Mars - Venus problem :D
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further. Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further. Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
You have established his point. You are suggesting to make the sentence "simpler" than it already is. But by doing so, you remove that part of the sentence which makes it profound. As it stands, the sentence is as simple as possible. It is precisely misguided oversimplification that he is warning about.