Comment On Stand Back, I'm Educated!

These people we label "legends in their own minds."

Alex Papadimoulis:

Expert:
Ok, then. But don't explain it to me. I've gotta finish this up, and
don't want to spend an hour learning something that'll be of no use to
me.

I have said this for years.  Hex is of such little use, why don't we just get rid of it. 

Ow. Owie ow owwwww ouch. 

I'd think it was high time to do some calling around on those 2 "degrees".



You know, just to make sure it wasn't something like "Perdue of the Bayou, Louisiana"

I'd bet the Purdue
Mechanical Engineering degree misses out two important concepts...
"nut" and "bolt"... should try him with those two.  :|



The post kinda reminds me of the one about the pointy-haired boss who
called the programmer in to tell him his code was unreadable because
there were "too many colons" 

just keep giving him rope and eventually he'll hang himself....

Mung Kee:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Expert:
Ok, then. But don't explain it to me. I've gotta finish this up, and
don't want to spend an hour learning something that'll be of no use to
me.

I have said this for years.  Hex is of such little use, why don't we just get rid of it. 

Yeah, real men code constants in Base64.

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

One of my first corporate IT positions was with an internation
freightbroker.  For some reason they had more Purdue graduates
than any other college.  And in my personal experience Purdue
graduates are the most obnoxious and condescending alumnists that I
have ever had the displeasure of working with.  My personal
favorite was one Purdue Masters holder who argued about the origin of
the word "Illinois".  He believed it was French and kept
explaining to me the correct pronunciation is "Illi-nowah".  After
several minutes of debate he basically declared that my education was
*ahem* lacking. Fortunately for myself his friend, a US history major
was coming to visit and he would set me straight.  When his friend
arrived he practically tackled him and told him to illuminate me on the
origin of the word "Illinois".  Before his friend could finish his
sentence I was already laughing hysterically.  To the Masters
holder's dismay his friend said, "Many people believe that 'Illinois'
is a French word, but it comes from the name of the Native American
tribe that was already living here prior to the French and English
settlers."  I laughed and wished them a good weekend and took my
illiterate and under-educated kiester out for a beer.  Purdue
Boilermakers, their heads are always like a boiler ready to explode,
they're huge.

That was a Dilbert cartoon, and the real punchline was Dilbert
explaining that he used so many colons "because they remind me of you,
sir."



It took me a while to make the connection between "colon" and "large intestine" and "full of sh*t"!

Just3Ws:

One of my first corporate IT positions was with an internation
freightbroker.  For some reason they had more Purdue graduates
than any other college.  And in my personal experience Purdue
graduates are the most obnoxious and condescending alumnists that I
have ever had the displeasure of working with.  My personal
favorite was one Purdue Masters holder who argued about the origin of
the word "Illinois".  He believed it was French and kept
explaining to me the correct pronunciation is "Illi-nowah".  After
several minutes of debate he basically declared that my education was
*ahem* lacking. Fortunately for myself his friend, a US history major
was coming to visit and he would set me straight.  When his friend
arrived he practically tackled him and told him to illuminate me on the
origin of the word "Illinois".  Before his friend could finish his
sentence I was already laughing hysterically.  To the Masters
holder's dismay his friend said, "Many people believe that 'Illinois'
is a French word, but it comes from the name of the Native American
tribe that was already living here prior to the French and English
settlers."  I laughed and wished them a good weekend and took my
illiterate and under-educated kiester out for a beer.  Purdue
Boilermakers, their heads are always like a boiler ready to explode,
they're huge.

Actually , The word "Illinois" is the French form of the
Algonquin name "Illini" which means "superior men." It is
how some native Americans in this area referred to themselves.

This is the best WTF I've read in a long time.  I would love to meet that guy.

It reminds me of a different Dilbert comic, or rather series. Namely, the "Certified Network Engineer" series.



Stand back! I'm certified!

It's been around since the dawn of computing.

Actually, octal is older than hexadecimal. Hexadecimal didn't make it big until the 1980's.

But the correct response to the young engineer should have been

Hey, it's your sensor that spitting out the letters!

Raymond Chen:

It's been around since the dawn of computing.

Actually, octal is older than hexadecimal. Hexadecimal didn't make it big until the 1980's.

Ah, no.  It was used on IBM mainframes well before then.



Sincerely,



Gene Wirchenko

Alex Papadimoulis:

Expert:
Ok, then. But don't explain it to me. I've gotta finish this up, and
don't want to spend an hour learning something that'll be of no use to
me.

"Expert"?  Someone who was formerly pert? <G>  Education is wasted on too many stupid and prideful people.



This WTF reminds me of the Dilbert strip where Dilbert and Wally are
comparing nuclear power and stupidity: both can be used for good or
evil, and you do not want to get any on you.



Sincerely,



Gene Wirchenko

Just3Ws:

One of my first corporate IT positions was with an internation freightbroker.  For some reason they had more Purdue graduates than any other college.  And in my personal experience Purdue graduates are the most obnoxious and condescending alumnists that I have ever had the displeasure of working with.

I only know one Purdue grad and he's one of the most humble and agreeable people I've every known.

But I do find that there are a lot of grads from 'top schools' that feel that the tower over the mere peons they 'work' with.  The schools that I usually associate this with are Harvard and Cambridge.  This is pretty universal though.  I bet you can find someone from the worst school in the nation that is throwing their intellectual weight around some people who didn't go to college.

Alex Papadimoulis:

Expert: Ok, then. But don't explain it
to me. I've gotta finish this up, and don't want to spend an hour
learning something that'll be of no use to me.

Apparently that Purdue CS degree wasn't of much use to him either. But
seriously, how could someone complete a CS degree and not know about
hex?

Wait a second, Purdue is considered a "top school"?

Anonymous:

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary and those who don't...  [8-|]

Mr. Bill

Ooo, Raymond Chen posts here.

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary and those who don't...  [8-|]

Mr. Bill

I wouldn't go taking credit for that yet



http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/

FYI,



Purdue CS department is in a gym. "Memorial Gymnasium" is carved into
the marble while "Department of Computer Science" is a tiny plastic
sign.



I think this story makes sense when you consider CS graduates coming out of a gym... ;)

Mung Kee:

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary and those who don't...  [8-|]

Mr. Bill

I wouldn't go taking credit for that yet



http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/

I came up with all the ideas for Sesame Street.



Sincerely,



Richard Nixon

Matt B:

Wait a second, Purdue is considered a "top school"?

Surely not for CS.  I'm pretty sure they are highly ranked in other Engineering disciplines though.

Richard Nixon:

Mung Kee:

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary and those who don't...  [8-|]

Mr. Bill

I wouldn't go taking credit for that yet



http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/

I came up with all the ideas for Sesame Street.



Sincerely,



Richard Nixon

Even the HIV+ muppet?

dubwai:

But I do find that there are a lot of grads from 'top schools' that feel that the tower over the mere peons they 'work' with.  The schools that I usually associate this with are Harvard and Cambridge.  This is pretty universal though.  I bet you can find someone from the worst school in the nation that is throwing their intellectual weight around some people who didn't go to college.

This isn't limited to college grads.  I've run into plenty of self-proclaimed experts that you can't reason with.

Alex Papadimoulis:

The raw data is a long hexadecimal string, and looks something like this:

D86442AE68F94C70B31036BCF0904242

5889A429F97A4963906A52C27C523C23

A97033272C3E435BAC4657B5781447C2

167BBCEED02A46C39FFB65BBE2D2815B

DBF04628498241F0A32975CC57B3861D

BEB37DC4B0544D399E75A3EC827D786B

046989F766CD45E1B362B4DCD7262231

024E2AE20D71491EA030CF29208D5232

206C69AD282C4E1D8966E3516A4292B9

999BD8A73B9149D79533E9C16F87666D

Just out of curiosity, who decided to generate guids to represent the data?

Or perhaps the Purdue was like in Frank Purdue Chicken Farms....

Either your young compadre is lying about his qualifications, or this
story's complete balony, cooked up to to pour scorn on young turks.



There is not a single Computer Science degree on the planet
that doesn't contain numerous areas where hex is used and taught
extensively. A CompSci graduate not knowing about hex is like a
mathematician not knowing about addition.



I smell bull.

Mung Kee:

Richard Nixon:

Mung Kee:

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

I wonder if he knows what binary is.

There are only 10 types of people in the world:  Those who understand binary and those who don't...  [8-|]

Mr. Bill

I wouldn't go taking credit for that yet



http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/5aa9/

I came up with all the ideas for Sesame Street.



Sincerely,



Richard Nixon

Even the HIV+ muppet?

Listen pal - Big Bird, Oscar, Elmo, and the rest of the gang are not
muppets. As far as I am concerned, all those muppets can drop straight
down to the hot place. My Sesame Street creations have class, unlike
Jim Henson's foul offspring.



And yes, I came up with the idea for Kami as a way to teach kids in South Africa about AIDS. Thank you.



Sincerely,



Richard Nixon

nar·cis·sism    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (närs-szm) also nar·cism (-szm)
n.

1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit.

Okay Professor Cooper

As a Big Ten grad who is married to someone with degrees from 2 Big Ten schools (none of which are Purdue), I just *love* how this has turned into a Purdue bashing thread.

-ds

[pi]
[B]

@#$%@#$%@#

I'm apparently pizza and beer deficient as well...

Anonymous:

A CompSci graduate not knowing about hex is like a
mathematician not knowing about addition.

Addition???  now who's making stuff up?

Sincerely,

DisturbedSaint

Either your young compadre is lying about his qualifications, or this story's complete balony, cooked up to to pour scorn on young turks.

There is not a single Computer Science degree on the planet that doesn't contain numerous areas where hex is used and taught extensively. A CompSci graduate not knowing about hex is like a mathematician not knowing about addition.

I smell bull.

++

There is no way in hell that he doesn't know what hex is with those credentials.  No way.

Anonymous:

Either your young compadre is lying about his qualifications, or this
story's complete balony, cooked up to to pour scorn on young turks.



There is not a single Computer Science degree on the planet
that doesn't contain numerous areas where hex is used and taught
extensively. A CompSci graduate not knowing about hex is like a
mathematician not knowing about addition.



I smell bull.

I do not.  In 2002, I started a diploma program to finally get
formal credentials in computing.  A first semester class
introduced hex.  The instructor allowed a hex cheatsheet during
exams.  Yes, I mean something that said A=10, B=11, etc.



I can see some programs not dealing with hex at all.  I would be rather leery about their quality though.



One poster asked why GUIDs were used.  32 hex characters does not
necessarily mean a GUID.  I was reading hex dumps in the '70s that
consisted of lines of 32 hex characters.  After all, that is
10(hex) bytes.



Sincerely,



Gene Wirchenko

 

I have the reverse problem - some developers on my team have this thing
about using hex for magic numbers in code. I have to trawl through huge
case statements like:



switch(l)

{

    case 1: 

       i = 0x005A;

       break;

    case 2:

       i = 0x0168;

       ...



They aren't even byte-oriented numbers or anything, they're just twips measurements.

Anonymous:

Alex Papadimoulis:

The raw data is a long hexadecimal string, and looks something like this:

D86442AE68F94C70B31036BCF0904242

5889A429F97A4963906A52C27C523C23

A97033272C3E435BAC4657B5781447C2

167BBCEED02A46C39FFB65BBE2D2815B

DBF04628498241F0A32975CC57B3861D

BEB37DC4B0544D399E75A3EC827D786B

046989F766CD45E1B362B4DCD7262231

024E2AE20D71491EA030CF29208D5232

206C69AD282C4E1D8966E3516A4292B9

999BD8A73B9149D79533E9C16F87666D

Just out of curiosity, who decided to generate guids to represent the data?

Anonymous:

There is not a single Computer Science degree on the planet
that doesn't contain numerous areas where hex is used and taught
extensively.

While this sure /seems/ likely, I'd hesitate to claim this. I've had people say this about various data structures that weren't addressed at ECU's CS program (Red-Black Trees, for example). I've also had to explain binary<=>decimal conversions to a CS senior. I know he'd learned it (multiple times) before, but he was just really stupid.

Ron G:

There is not a single Computer Science degree on the planet that doesn't contain numerous areas where hex is used and taught extensively. A CompSci graduate not knowing about hex is like a mathematician not knowing about addition.

What class would this be taught in? Core ComSci coureses are Data Structures, Hardware & Arch, Op Sys, Compiler Design -- the only one I could see it being used in is Hardware & Architecture, but then again, it isn't really necessary to use hex to teach H&A.

nahhh i think it's fake...2 degrees and don't know Hex? gimme a break...

A friend of mine swears that more than half the CS graduates he
interviews can't tell him what 5 is in binary, even if given all the
time they want and pen and paper.

Gene Wirchenko:

One poster asked why GUIDs were used.  32 hex characters does not necessarily mean a GUID.  I was reading hex dumps in the '70s that consisted of lines of 32 hex characters.  After all, that is 10(hex) bytes. 

You are correct that a 32 hex characters do not necessarily mean a GUID.  In fact, only a fraction of randomly generated 32 hex character strings would actually represent a GUID.

However, each line in the submitted sample data is a GUID, and I was just curious whether Alex or Todd decided to generate a few as 'random' data.

Alex Papadimoulis:

Good observation! I added the hex for effect ... I figured I could have either done a bunch of "SELECT NEWID() UNION ..." or used the GenerateHex function ... but I didn't want any "z" in there confusing things ;-)

Thanks Alex!

Just because the degree program offers the courses, does not mean they are required for the degree.

I have a BSCS and MSCS. The BSCS only _required_ that we know what hex was.

The MSCS never touched hex.  Perhaps you are thinking of an EE degree?

15 years ago, when I was a know-it-all recent grad, I had the misfortune of working with some seasoned developers who were really were morons. When I approached the seasoned team lead of the database group (raised on COBOL and hierarchical IBM databases) to discuss a completely retarded relational data model (not even first normal form, only one foreign key was allowed per table, keys were generated with no unique identifier derived from data), I tried explain the concept of foreign keys, primary keys one to many, and many to many relationships, referential integrity and how those concepts, if applied to the data model would make it usable.

I was dismissed with this zinger "key, foreign key, what's the difference?, they are both keys, your ivory tower BS won't work in the real world, relational databases are just like any other, bla bla bla..". They never straightened out the retarded data model, and the product never worked becuase the database was always filled with nonsense.

Of course the problems were blamed on  relational database technology in general, not  the fact that the people designing the database were complte morons who had absolutley no clue about relational databases.

I bet he has great computer hacking skills, though. Girls like boyfriends with great skills. [W]

I went to hex education when I was in middle school.  This guy obviously didn't.  I thought all adolescents at some point learned about hex.....either through rumors, reading, or experimentation.

 

what a pitiful play on words..........sigh....