Discarded wit

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I’m writing some stuff about creating your own programming language at the moment. As I write I find things that I quite like, but aren’t really suitable for publication. Good thing I’ve got the blog then….

  • Bottom-up design: Start with the low level functions and build on them.

  • Bottoms-up design: Start by getting very drunk and writing some random code

  • Bottom-down design: Just get more and more depressed about what you are trying to do

  • Bottom-out design: Hope that things won’t get any worse.

  • Top-down design: start with the big picture and then break it down into chunks to build a map of your solution. Then create each chunk.

  • Top-up design: find a coffee place that does free refills and then keep drinking caffeine until inspiration strikes or you have a seizure.

  • Top-trumps design: forget about writing software and spend your time playing card games from your childhood.

Recycled Humour

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I’m recycling jokes from the past because I think you all deserve to hear them again. This ones from February 27th 2006:

We were discussing paper sizes and I got to thinking about Caesar and his famous discussion about the dimensions of the posters they wanted to put around the colosseum, and how all that went horribly wrong when Caesar turned to his most trusted friend and said "A2 Brutus?".

Old Jokes

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Found this as I was going through the archives searching for something else. It is part of a Red Nose Day Lecture from 2001. If you find any of these funny you are very old….

Little Known Programming Languages

Threetran

- a precursor to Fortran. Programs are written on punched tablets.

Failscal

- similar to Pascal, but is so strongly typed that nothing ever compiles.

C--

- an attempt to take all the dangerous things out of C. The language syntax contains just the open and close curly bracket symbols.

Invisible Basic

- all the program code is stored behind one button on the screen, which is hidden.

Fifth

- a stack based language which uses a much stronger spring on the stack so that programs run faster.

Nescafe

- create secure, distributed, object oriented, platform independent, multi-threaded programs just by adding hot water, rather than grinding beans.

C Flat

- an early version of C#. Also called Microsoft Java.

Disassembler

- used to write machine code programs which fall apart very quickly.

AMLOG

- similar to PROLOG, but used by AI programmers who aren't actually being paid.

Tulips

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So there’s this chap in Holland with lots and lots of hamsters. And then they had the great hamster plague of 1673 which left the poor bloke with lots and lots of dead hamsters. So he did the only thing he could. He made some jam out of them. He was hoping that this hamster form of meat paste would sell well, but nobody wanted it. So eventually he threw the lot out of his kitchen window. Six months later he’s looking at the flowerbed outside the window and wondering why there was suddenly a huge patch of daffodils growing there. He mentioned this to a gardening friend who thought for a while, and then replied (altogether now): “That’s strange. You normally get tulips from hamster jam”.

Bitcoin boilers

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Bitcoin mining, where powerful computers solve mathematical puzzles to generate money that is almost probably real, is consuming an increasing amount of power around the world. As all the power that goes into the computer comes out as heat, it seems to me that it would be sensible to make good use of this power.

Why not make “bitcoin boilers” that use heat from the computers to do something useful? That way you could get paid for having a hot shower. I’m not sure about all the detail - I’m strictly an ideas man here - but I think it is worth a try.

Version control and the end of time

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boom.png

The Timelords met, as Timelords do, from time to time for a coffee. And when they met they liked to talk about the old times and universes that have come and gone. “Ah, the earth universe” said one. “Indeed” said another. “I thought it had promise” said a third.

“The humans had discovered software and version control, and all was going reasonably well. And then one human decided to try to find out what happens if you put the name of the gitignore file into the gitignore file. And then their reality collapsed on itself. ”

The first timelord stared into his coffee cup. “If only they had known the true power of Git” he said glumly.

Thermos flasks are the future

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If I was into the stock market (which I am not) I reckon at the moment the smart money is going into thermos flasks.

Think about it. Soon folks are going be allowed to go out a bit more. And when they do they will find that no cafes are open So, instead they will have to take their own food and drink when they go out. And that means that they will want to keep their drinks nice and hot. So they will all rush out (or rush in) and buy a new thermos flask.

You heard it here first. Oh, and it reminds me of my favourite thermos flask joke:

Stooge 1: “What’s that"?”
Stooge 2: “It’s my new thermos flask”
Stooge 1: “What does it do?”
Stooge 2: “It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold”
Stooge 1: “Awesome. What have you got in it?”
Stooge 2: “A cup of coffee and a choc ice”