(no subject)

[maradydd]

A programmer is sent to the grocery store with instructions to "buy butter and see if they have eggs. If they do, buy ten."

Returning with ten butters, the programmer says, "They had eggs."

Comments

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

*sporfle*

Am I the only one who reads it this way?

[tdj.livejournal.com]

Alternate version: "Returning with eleven butters, the programmer says, 'They had eggs.'"

Re: Am I the only one who reads it this way?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on how many runs through the checkout line you see.

[drcuriosity]

*laughs* Ah, the joy of lazy evaluation.

[madeofmeat.livejournal.com]

AUTISM IS NOT FUNNY! :)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Aw, but if I can't laugh at myself, who can I laugh at?

Missing programmer found in the shower

[teapot7.livejournal.com]

Next to them, an empty shampoo bottle. On the label, "lather, rinse, repeat"

Re: Missing programmer found in the shower

[uke.livejournal.com]

hey, it didn't say "use more shampoo." more likely the programmer is now bald from trying to lather up already-rinsed hair.

[(Anonymous)]

If I be the programmer, I'd ask (before going to the store), "What do you want ten of? Eggs or--" and the sender usually interrupts me, angrily shouting, "Don't question me! Just do it!"

I'd be buying ten butters and ten eggs, because I don't want to be wrong, nor do I want to be yelled at.

I'd keep what was over-purchased, because it'll eventually be consumed by someone. If I returned the item to the store, it's likely to be thrown out, because it's deli (I dislike wasting food).

A response to "madeofmeat":
What does her joke have to do with autism? Unless there's something I'm missing?

oops

[green-roc.livejournal.com]

Forgot to log in, pardon. "(Anonymous) Aug. 17th, 2009 02:19 am (UTC)" was me.

[teapot7.livejournal.com]

> What does her joke have to do with autism? Unless there's something I'm missing?

I'm not madeofmeat but I'm assuming a joking reference to overliteral and socially unadept behaviour associated with autism and aspergers - and the frequently proposed idea that programmers and engineers are often a bit further along the autistic spectrum than other people.

[green-roc.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of a programmer... but I do have Aspergers, so I know exactly what you mean.

More often than not, I don't get jokes, so thanks for the enlightenment :) It is funny :D

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

Apply this to your average cookbook; watch things go very wrong.

[michiexile]

Now I'm getting tempted to try this - just to see how my wife'd react to it!

"But honey! I'm only trying to follow the recipe for once!"

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

I should consider writing up a few "critical reading" problems of that nature. From experience, of course.

[vatine]

If I claimed a litchen mess was down to me following a recipe, I am pretty sure my wife would backpedal and say "WHo are you and what have you done to vatine?" I think the last time I checked a recipe was when I needed the specifics for the pickling brine out of Prinsessornas kokbok and that was only the once (and some 4-5 years ago, now).

[michiexile]

I read recipes.

I just don't care about them for more than inspirations.

And my wife is quite annoyed by my attitude towards recipes - she wants reproducibility for my cooking, not creativity! And the fact that I can't bring myself to keeping a labcooking journal and thus may well have forgotten what I did that one time when it turned out absolutely magical annoys her constantly.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. enochsmiles and I cook the way jazz bands improvise. We'll start with a general theme ("beef, and a red-wine-based sauce"), and he'll start committing acts of saucery while I season the meat. He'll feed me dollops of sauce-in-progress as I'm busy grinding and hand-rubbing spices, and we'll shift the direction of our seasoning in response to one another's work.

Unfortunately this doesn't lend itself well to keeping notes, so we've had a lot of "that was amazing and we're never going to be able to recreate it" meals.

[michiexile]

This calls for The Story Of The Greek Meatballs.

For one of our celebrate-that-we-still-love-each-other festivities in years past, I decided on a greek-ish theme. Acquired lamb mince, lots and lots of fresh basil, garlic, tomato sauce, honey, rice, yoghurt, cucumbers, chili, ginger, and possibly some more things.

Made the lamb balls very spicy. Studded with feta cheese. The tomato sauce honey-sweetened and mild, to offset and surprise. And made the tzatziki VERY garlicy. Somehow, the ginger in the meat balls lifted this dish from "really good" to "Hey, this is the most fantastic I have ever tasted - IN MY LIFE".

So, a few months later, my beloved amerikabrev insists on having it again. And I try to recreate it. I get everything but ginger right. And it's only "really good". My wife is annoyed.

We try it over and over again, in intervals of maybe 3 months, over a few years, before the idea to add ginger surfaces. The entire process is coupled with her constantly berating my lack of journaling skills.

[vatine]

My cookbooks live in the library. I don't think anyone of them have ever been in the kitchen. Normally, all I need from them is inspiration, but for bread and pickling, I normally want the "recipe as it stands" down pat. For bread, because it may go weird and for pickling because otherwise it may go lethal.

Other than that? Nah, recipes ar ethings that happen to other people. I can, usually, recreate a previously produced dish, if (and only if) I can re-capture the mindset at the time.

[michiexile]

Bread is one thing I have grave difficulties doing By The Book. Me and thette went to a LARP a while back as bakers, build an oven and baked for a week. We prepared by baking every week for half a year, and thus gained intuition for the process of making bread.

Very helpful, that kind of intuition.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Wow, what kind of LARPs have that kind of infrastructure? I'd get back into LRP for something like that.

[vatine]

LARPs in Sweden are not the same animals as the LARPs outside Scandawegia. Not that the LARPs in Sweden are anywhere near how they used to be, back in the late 80s, early 90s. I spent four days playing a tavern handyman, cooking for 80-odd people (and baking, but I cheated and had an actual baker as a reference) in, um, summer of '93 I think.

[michiexile]

Swedish LARP culture is f*cking awesome, and the only place that even approximates it seems to be Finland.

And this one was a f*cking ambitious LARP even for Swedish standards: Kejsartemplet.

We built a CITY on a clearing in a forest. Everyone got material enough to build a 2-room house for themselves. And 2 days to do it in. The organizers got us literally a metric ton of bricks to build the oven from. And we shared courtyard with the sweet bakers and the smithy. Other groups built three-story towers, or took HUGE casks for the public bath house et.c.

And we lived the day-to-day life of the city during some of its more exciting days for a week. Neighbourhood squabbles mixed with High Politics (Oh GOD, the QUEEN has ordered baked goods!!) mixed with Elven Bastards Attacking The City mixed with ...

[vatine]

The last "large one" I was at was, IIRC, Nattens Ögon, at the time ambitiously large, with multiple settlements (tents, though) and multiple hundreds of people. It's gone larger since, though.

[alexey-rom.livejournal.com]

Hah! Haven't heard this one.

[oliverx.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are a bunch of implied bindings in this program, not just one:

buy [one unit of] butter [from some vendor] and see if [that vendor] has [more than one] egg. If [that same vendor] has eggs, buy ten [units] [of those eggs].

We can see all these bindings explicitly by transliterating:

vendor.buy(butter, 1)
see = (vendor.has(egg) >= 1):
if vendor.has(egg) >= 1:
vendor.buy(egg, 10)

There's an obvious bug with 2 < eggs < 10.

I would actually be less surprised with the programmer who came back with 120 eggs. As the minimum purchase unit is typically 12, buying 10 units seems to be implied. This programmer would apply his standard vegan substitution rules and return with one tub of Earth Balance margarine and ten boxes of Egg Replacer (about 800 egg equivalents).

This parsing bug is significantly less serious than failure to properly track implied subjects and objects, as that parser feature is generally invoked multiple times per line of input.

Here's a related bug:

"Buy cookies and see if they have eggs. If they do, buy ten."

The programmer may return with 10 boxes of cookies if said cookies are made with eggs. The buggy parsing rule is "bind [they] to the last plural mentioned".

[neoliminal.livejournal.com]

My wife said, "I don't get it."

Which made me think of another way to do this joke.

Man get's a note from his wife which reads "Get 10 eggs from the store."

Man calls wife from the store and says "Honey, is this in binary or hexadecimal?"

Wife say "Men are so stupid. You make things too complicated because you ignore the obvious.
It's in ternary."

[staghounds.livejournal.com]

How do you get an elephant in a refrigerator?

Open the door and put it in.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

But you have to take it back out before you put the giraffe in.

[staghounds.livejournal.com]

Therefore, I can conclude that the elephant is not in the door rack.

I can also conclude that you plan to use the elephant first, or that the elephant blocks access to the giraffe shelf or drawer.