A Humorous Thursday

I was a little down today, so I decided to cheer myself up. At first I watched The Office, but after dinner I was thinking about Computer Science, so I remembered that I had a little stockpile of humorous Programmer jokes! Well, I suppose it it your lucky day, I've decided to post a few (and link to the sources of course). None of these are mine, but I hope they brighten your day :D.

• We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.

• Programming is a lot like sex. One mistake and you could have to support it the rest of your life.

• You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.

many more here

• After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

• Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.

• If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

• If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.

• Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.

• It is never wise to let a piece of electronic equipment know that you are in a hurry.

• Any tool dropped will fall where it can cause the most damage.

full list here!

A look at Twitter, FriendFeed and Pownce

For awhile now, I have made an effort to expose my friends and colleagues to Twitter, a popular microblogging tool used by the majority of the "tech/web" community. Personally, I love using Twitter, its ever so convenient and addictive! However, whenever I use Twitter, I am questioned "what's the point?" I attempt to explain how it works (with too much detail I might add) but to no avail, nobody understands.

popular microblogging tool has more use than initially thought

One of the frustrating parts of this is that I see many opportunities where me and my colleagues COULD and should use Twitter! One of the most frustrating things I see today occurs when I am having lunch with my friends. Someone, one time or another, does not get invited and exclaims "you guys had dinner??" See, this would not happen if everyone used Twitter that I know. One person could tweet "going to dinner at 5" and everyone could get it on their phone/web browser/desktop twitter app. Then everyone shows up!

How convenient.

All in all I suppose I can't argue with these people, as they are college students who are more worried about how much alcohol they are going to buy this weekend than emerging technology! How could this possibly be (sarcasm)!

Anyways, this article is not what I was going to write when I first started. Sites like Twitter, FriendFeed and many others have not reached what I would prefer to call "mainstream." Then one would ask, what would be considered mainstream? I'll sum it up with two websites: Facebook and YouTube.

YouTube

There is not a person I know that doesn't occasionally go on YouTube to check out the latest cool video, or are eager to show their friend "this video," that you "gotta watch!"

Simply put, YouTube is built upon something that anyone can do: make a crappy, low quality video that somehow gets 50,000 views. I'm not going to lie, I'm a fan of YouTube myself (prefer Vimeo), but the quality of the videos on YouTube is much to be desired. It seems that quality takes a backseat to content when it comes to mainstream video sites, although I can't tell you how many times I've heard casual gamers complain that "the graphics aren't good enough." The need for high quality video is lower on the Web than it is "in real life." For example, anyone will watch crappy football highlights via YouTube, but who would watch an entire game like that? Nobody.

On the other hand, let's look at this: who would watch football on a 60'' hi-def television?

EVERYBODY.

This list of everybody includes people such as myself, who is not a football fan at all! Even my mom who can't tell the difference between 5.1 Surround and Mono enjoys a nice HD screen. Oh, and yes I realize that sound and video are two different things, just making a point.

Anyway, my point is that everyone loves videos that are funny or interesting, regardless of quality. This is typical "mainstream" internet culture.

Facebook

Going onto the main hub on the web for keeping in touch, Facebook is no doubt something that everyone I know uses. Its the most used way of communication in college, perhaps only second to cell phones. Now, I admit that I use Facebook frequently, I check it every morning along with my email and my news websites. I suppose I should include Myspace and Orkut in this, as these are the three most globally used social networks. These websites are the easiest way to keep in touch with people about what's going on. Everything from pictures to stupid and useless apps are included in this free package deal about what is going on in your entire life (insert older generation outrage about identity theft here). Not that there is anything at all wrong with using these networks, it just makes life a bit more impersonal than, say in the 1950s. Times change, so does technology and that old corded phone is pretty much useless.

Summary/Conclusion

It disappoints me greatly that sites like Twitter and FriendFeed aren't used more. Although its slowly catching on, and since my first tweet I have gained many followers (some I know, many I don't), it still isn't a mainstream tool used by, dare I say "normal" people? Anyway, my point is that micro-blogging tools are very useful, but have not matured to their fruitation quite yet. My prediction is that they will in the near future, and we can hope to count on that.

Stack Overflow: Ask a question without getting grilled.

As a very amatuer programmer, I find myself looking for answers all the time. Most of the time I have to ask a professor or another student when I need help. However, other times I find myself going online, on Sun’s Java forums, or some other java site. It seems to me that every time I look something up, I see posts asking for help. Though there are many helpful people, a lot of them can be not so nice- okay they can be downright nasty. So far, Stack Overflow is quite the opposite of this. One can freely ask programming questions in a fairly “Web 2.0-like” fashion.


One can freely ask programming questions in a fairly “Web 2.0-like” fashion.


It is a lot like Digg, where those with the most popular questions/answers are voted up or down, based on the answers and quality of the question. Another cool feature is that one needs to earn “reputation points” in order to vote questions up/down. One gets this “rep” by answering someone’s question with a helpful answer (much like the “best answer” option on Yahoo! Answers). The site is really informative, and can be quite humorous as well. For example, this question asks “What’s your favorite programming joke?” Helpful and Humorous, Stack Overflow is a great site for both amatuer and experienced programmers, of any language!