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I saw Einstein's famous quote about the need for simplicity on slashdot today:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex - the ending clause is redundant, for if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further.
Was he of the wild hair pulling our leg?
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But without the last bit the sentiment would have been lost.
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"Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
- Albert Einstein
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That was Newton.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I thought it was Newton-John.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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No - he was making a point about not using an impossible explanation for something simply because it is "simpler"... like magic or supernatural occurrence.
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He's just applying Occam's Razor with a clause: don't oversimplify things by making up steps.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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B. Clay Shannon wrote: ...but then realized that the quote itself as not as simple as possible, because the potentially simple sentence is complex
An example, please; "simple" does not mean the fewest possible characters as possible, that would be obfuscation in C++ style. That's why "not simpeler" is included.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Please... Obfuscation newbie-style is far more advanced.
In high school a (female, good-loking) classmate asked me for help for the laboratory classwork. Leaving apart the fact that there were over 40 variables and the task was trivial - they were named... A, B, C, D, E ... AA, AB, AC... Of course without comments or anything.
More obfuscated than THAT? Her brain.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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When I was as Comp.Sci student, one of the professors was really pushing 'descriptive variable names' to the extreme. I happened to look over the shoulder of the brightest guy in our class while he was working on a programming homework: His integer variables were named I00, I01, I02, ..., reals were R00, R01, ... and so on. I was shocked: "Do you really think Prof. C will accept that?"
"Oh, no", he replied, "Before I hand it in to Prof C., I will do a textual substitute, replacing all I01s with 'NumberOfOilCans', all R04s with 'WeightOfEachCanWhenEpty' and so on. But I couldn't possibly work with that kind of names - think of all that extra typing, how long that would take!"
His mental capacity was so that he didn't need any 'descriptive names' - he could easily map from R04 to the concept of WeightOfEachCanWhenEmpty without any visual reminder. Descriptive names are for people with less mental capacity 
The only negative thing about his style is that after making his substitutions, the code lines would be 100, maybe 120, maybe 130 characters long. (When substituting, he used really long descriptive names). End-of-line comments would of course end up mis-aligned - but this was in the Fortran days when EOL-comments were non-standard.
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Both are good for code that won't be used ever after. You just gave me a terrible idea: if I'll ever teach, I will make the students work on their code of 2-3 months before. THAT will teach them the importance of code readability 
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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When I was teaching computer network software to last-year college students, I made myself the hate object of the year when I organized the group programming assignment in four stages throughout the full semester course: After each stage, each group handed their work over to another group, and were given another group's work as a base for the next stage.
Students hated revealing their own deficiencies to fellow students, and they hated having to struggle with that terrible code written by their completely incomptetent fellow students... Telling them that in a few months, this would be the normal working situation for them didn't really make it.
I have no regrets, even though the students hated me for it. An essential element in learning to code is learning to handle code from other programmers, and to make your own code so good that there is no reason to feel ashamed, no matter who reads it - both in plain readability and in other quality aspects.
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You have ALL my respect!  Also, a teacher can be hated for two reason: either he's incompetent or he's evil. Evil teachers are the only ones that really teach anything.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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Yesterday's regex[^]
Geek & Poke has been my favorite "insider" comic strip for a the last year.
The jokes are suprisingly durable - this one is almost three years old, and nothing has changed.
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Ah, Fortran... Where we remember this phrase:
God is Real, unless declared otherwise!!!
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One of my first COBOL instructors would give us an assignment, due in 2 weeks. a couple of us would complete it in the next couple days...
about halfway thru the time-frame... he'd change what he wanted us to do.
We thought he was too dumb to make up his problems ahead of time
little did we realize - he was teaching us what life as a programmer was really about...
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den2k88 wrote:
More obfuscated than THAT? Her brain.
But you already said she was female.
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Yeah, the usual Mars - Venus problem
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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B. Clay Shannon wrote: if something is already as simple as possible, it's impossible to simplify it further.
Which doesn't stop people from trying - I think his point is made.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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I think you're simply failing to appreciate that the word 'simple' is simply being used with two distinct, simple meanings; in the first case 'easy to understand or mentally manipulate', in the second 'idiotic', neither of which, incidentally necessarily conforms exactly to your imposed meaning of 'not complex'. In doing so you have highlighted the simple problem with all positivist interpretations of language, simple rigidity!
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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It's perfectly normal; he's using different inflections of the word.
I.e. If a task is complex, then find the simplest way to handle the complexity -- but don't make the task less complex.
E.g. building a car is a complex task, which has been made simpler and simpler over the years by people applying thought to processes and automation, and by improvements in technology -- but it would be pretty damned stupid to make the task simpler by removing all wheels from the design.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Einstein was the first one without saying to first having believed to make known what some barely understood favets of the cosmic system possessed to the point to anuerism, taking knowledge from demons crashed in the forties in new mexico as an end times means to deceive as knowledge is already simple, but relativity is the idea there is no set right and wrong, just like the serpent said in the garden
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Aaaarrghhh!!!! Not again!
MEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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marie915 wrote: but relativity is the idea there is no set right and wrong, just like the
serpent said in the garden
How does one get that from 'sssssssssss'?
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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jeron1 wrote: 'sssssssssss'
It's all in the variable frequency and intonation of 's'
#SupportHeForShe
Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson
You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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