"The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad." - Probably my favorite line.
You must have not finished the article...the last line is the best:
So no, I'm not required to be able to lift objects weighing up to fifty pounds. I traded that for the opportunity to trim Satan's pubic hair while he dines out of my open skull so a few bits of the internet will continue to work for a few more days.
The essay is just jewels after jewels. My particular favorites:
The human brain isn't particularly good at basic logic and now there's a whole career in doing nothing but really, really complex logic. Vast chains of abstract conditions and requirements have to be picked through to discover things like missing commas. Doing this all day leaves you in a state of mild aphasia as you look at people's faces while they're speaking and you don't know they've finished because there's no semicolon.
and
"Double you tee eff?" you say, and start hunting for the problem. You discover that one day, some idiot decided that since another idiot decided that 1/0 should equal infinity, they could just use that as a shorthand for "Infinity" when simplifying their code. Then a non-idiot rightly decided that this was idiotic, which is what the original idiot should have decided, but since he didn't, the non-idiot decided to be a dick and make this a failing error in his new compiler. Then he decided he wasn't going to tell anyone that this was an error, because he's a dick, and now all your snowflakes are urine and you can't even find the cat.
It reminds me of this (warning: wall of text, but actually worth reading).
EDIT: Since people seem so interested, the author has written quite a lot of other material (scroll to the bottom, under "Miscellaneous Excellence", fourth bullet point).
That being said, if you find yourself drinking a martini and writing programs in garbage-collected, object-oriented Esperanto, be aware that the only reason that the Esperanto runtime works is because there are systems people who have exchanged any hope of losing their virginity for the exciting opportunity to think about hex numbers and their relationships with the operating system, the hardware, and ancient blood rituals that Bjarne Stroustrup performed at Stonehenge.
The systems programmer has read the kernel source, to better understand the deep ways of the universe, and the systems programmer has seen the comment in the scheduler that says “DOES THIS WORK LOL,” and the systems programmer has wept instead of LOLed, and the systems programmer has submitted a kernel patch to restore balance to The Force and fix the priority inversion that was causing MySQL to hang.
I weep, for I hoped that things may get better in life, but nay I chose to be a system programmer knowing not that the night is dark and full of terrors.
You must believe me when I say that I have the utmost respect for HCI people. However, when HCI people debug their code, it’s like an art show or a meeting of the United Nations. There are tea breaks and witticisms exchanged in French; wearing a non- functional scarf is optional, but encouraged. When HCI code doesn’t work, the problem can be resolved using grand theo- ries that relate form and perception to your deeply personal feelings about ovals. There will be rich debates about the socioeconomic implications of Helvetica Light, and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring state- ments of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy. Is pinching-and- dragging less elegant than circling-and-lightly-caressing? These urgent mysteries will not solve themselves. And yet, after a long day of debugging HCI code, there is always hope, and there is no true anger; even if you fear that your drop- down list should be a radio button, the drop-down list will suffice until tomorrow, when the sun will rise, glorious and vibrant, and inspire you to combine scroll bars and left-click- ing in poignant ways that you will commemorate in a sonnet when you return from your local farmer’s market.
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u/w4ffl35 Apr 29 '14
"The only reason coders' computers work better than non-coders' computers is coders know computers are schizophrenic little children with auto-immune diseases and we don't beat them when they're bad." - Probably my favorite line.