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If I took a completely utilitarian approach to code, maybe it would be absurd, but I don't look at code as simply something to solve a problem. I look at it as an intellectual pursuit.
Generally coding for work rarely challenges me, but I'm not in the field anymore so I get to code what I want.
And I code for its own sake. I love the craft. One of the reasons C++ is so challenging is you can do so much with it. There's always more to learn. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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I'm sure that sentiment is what keeps (most of) us going. If there is no challenge, no intellectual pursuit, no learning something new, no testing different ideas (even if they turn out to be awful), then we don't grow and will just atrophy. Where would be the excitement if we just churned out the same old stuff day in, day out? We need to advance ourselves and grow. Maybe 99% of what we discover we'll never use again, but even that is expansion of our world view; and the other 1% is the gold nuggets that make it exciting and spur us to carry on.
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Having no box to think outside of, I get to enjoy it in three of the four ways one could enjoy it.
- The challenge of learning a knew language (competently)
- The challenge of solving a problem (independently of the language question).
- The challenge of solving a problem with the constraint of a particular language (or set of them)
- the fourth option in this truth-table view of it, the not learning a language to not solve a problem.
By the way - if you can somehow convolute the last of these into a way to get your work done, you will have truly become 'the Master[^]'.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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You can't claim you've truly mastered it until you find the 'cheat codes'.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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honey the codewitch wrote: I still believe C++ takes a lifetime of dedication to master
I do not think so. I am a C++ master, and I hope my life ain't going to end up shortly.  
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No offense, but if your name isn't Bjarne I find it hard to believe.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Na, the student seems to have surpassed his teacher. 
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honey the codewitch wrote: Mastering something leads to it being boring, IMO. I mean, not entirely. I can still love something but not have the thrill of the challenge anymore.
Perhaps you can demonstrate your mastery by turning some of your massive code-clusters published here ... as inscrutable as cuneiform tablets ... into usable tools ? Perhaps revisit these ziggurats your psyche has conjured on the darkling plane ... honey the codewitch wrote: All that's left is to teach.
I look forward to learning from you !
The thrill of knowing your mortal peers found your work useful could be, imho, as electric as knowing your genius is marvelled at 
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Too zen for me to ken.
If the chicken led to eggs, which led to dinosaur gingerbread, I could see it.
But I don't see the path from chicken meat to dinosaur gingerbread.
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I was a Calvin prototype, because I kept making dinosaurs (sometimes T-Rexes) during art in grade 2. The teacher must have found it incredibly tedious. 
Those are chicken nuggets? I don't know if they existed when I was 5. I never had 'em, but gingerbread are a big Scandi thing. The image isn't just zen, but a good Rorschach test.
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Considering what they put in chicken nuggets they are probably illegal in europe
Real programmers use butterflies
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Eccentric or not, you are hired!
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
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Like Greg, I've never seen them in "real life" - ads on TV don't count.
When I was a kid chicken came in a chicken-shaped lump, often with giblets in, sometimes with feathers on.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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When I lived in Turkey they came with heads on as well. If you were very squeamish the butcher would wrap the head in a paper bag.
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My mother used to make Brawn[^] from time to time, so you'd open the fridge to get milk for coffee, and there'd be a pigs head staring at you ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Fridge? Ha! If we wanted something kept cool, it was put on the kitchen outside windowsill. (During the summer, we didn't buy stuff that needed to be kept cool; milk was delivered in the morning and was warm by lunchtime.) We did have a fridge, but it didn't work so we just used it as a cupboard. So: "a fridge? You were lucky; there were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road."
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And I bet when your father came home from work he killed you all and danced on your grave.
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I knew this thread was going to go the way of the Four Yorkshiremen!
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The old ones are the best. But I think it should be re-titled "the four binary persons without va***as who live in the county of England best known for plain speech".
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(Well actually he never did come home; that was the cause of the lack of working fridge, and many other "hardships" that never seemed to cause any lasting harm.)
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The first image reminds me of the interesting and useless piece of information that less time separates us from Tyrannosaurus Rex than separated Tyrannosaurus Rex from Stegosaurus.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Peer heard self implicating (3)
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icannottellaliefatheritwasme.
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