(no subject)

[godream]

I haven't posted for quite a while; this is because very little has happened -- besides me discovering that this whole 9-5 working as a code monkey thing is tiring, time-consuming, hard work. *sigh* Boy, am I going to hate the real world.

A quick question for you non-computer science types: let's say you saw a sign next to a pie that said something like:
if ((you != name1) && (you != name2))
   {if (touchedPie == true)
      name1.killMode = true;
   }

... where name1 and name2 are replaced with names of people you know. Is that readable? At all? I'm totally serious here; I know what it means and I thought it was real obvious, but my dad also encouraged me to play with basic code since age seven or something so I'm a slightly biased observer. I would think the presence of the words "pie" and "kill" would make it easy to guess, at least... but I'd also think the whole thing was followable with perhaps the exception of the !=. ETA: Okay, I'm informed there may also be handwriting questions... but still.

(This leads into the question of: if you are name3 and see name4 eating pie, should you say something? I did (though as politely as possible) which may or may not make me an asshole.)

Also -- beat_the_beaver and I took an exciting trip to the Cambridge River Festival several weekends ago. (Okay, so maybe something has happened besides 9-5ing.) I loved it... a chaos of bright colors and music and people selling overpriced things that are pretty to browse through.

One of the three music tents was sponsored by the Middle East club; it was at this one that we saw (I kid you not) Harry and the Potters perform. We were tragically unimpressed; it looked like two guys and canned midi-quality sound, although a look at their website makes it appear that if we'd hung around past the first song we might have seen actual instruments emerge, which would have been much better. In any event, we were both amused by their intro, at least: "Hi, I'm Harry Potter." "And I'm Harry Potter." "And we're Harry and the Potters." "Our first song is about The Man, and how The Man can't keep rock down. In this case, The Man is Voldemort..." (begin Voldemort Can't Stop The Rock).

Later, we were sitting and watching a few kayaks go down the river (while listening to a Spanish punk rock bank which I liked a lot) when this car comes puttering under the bridge. Under the bridge, not across the bridge -- evidently the couple driving this sucker had somehow modified it to be a boat. It was really fantastic -- you couldn't see any modifications from where we were, they might as well have been driving on land except maybe for the fact that they were steering backwards (Gina pointed out that they'd probably rigged the wheel to the rudder). It was an older car, with that sort of classic look to it, though neither of us were car buffs enough to be able to identify it (we thought you'd like it, liz_factorial) but it was extremely cool.

Comments

[blue-everglades.livejournal.com]

it took me a moment to parse your code, and i could see where any non-course 6 person might not get it, but if they were 6, that's just jackassery on their part.

i wish i'd been there to go to the river festival with you guys. hope loft-building and summery stuff is going well, and i hope your job isn't so painful!

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

It's perfectly readable to me, but I took a year and a half of C++ in high school. I miss it, looking at that.

[kantayra.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have no trouble reading it, but I took a year of C++ in college. Before that, I'd just been an intensive math geek, and I probably could have figured it out just from that, although it probably would have taken me longer. I don't think it's the != operator that's difficult so much as the fact that there are imbedded if statements. Those take a while to work through, if you're not used to them.

[liz-factorial.livejournal.com]

I totally got it, and hey, you know me...I could ask my mom...i think i'll do that......she didnt get it. I think it might work better if you said:

if ((me != name1) && (you != name2))
{if (touchedPie == true)
name1.killMode = true;
}

I donno...it would work better for me cause i had to read it a time or two before i laughed, but i donno...good luck with that pie thing :)

[cassandraia.livejournal.com]

I get it...my mother usually says it to my dad and I.

[beat-the-beaver.livejournal.com]

SO, as the resident non-6 person, I should say that even I figured, based on certain key words such as "pie" and "kill." And I've never taken a programming class in my life. I think maybe some people just want free pie :)