The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Fred Foobar · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

(let ((comment '())) 
  (dotimes (x 4) 
    (cond 
      ((= x 0) (push #\W comment) 
       (= x 1) (push #\T comment)
       (= x 2) (push #\F comment)
       (= x 3) (push #\? comment)))) 
  (coerce (nreverse comment) 'string))

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

[quote user="Kermos"][quote user="Anon"][quote user="campkev"][quote user="Kermos"]

Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.[/quote]

Sorry, messed that up:

I could of gone?[/quote]

Yep, you definitely messed that up... [/quote]

Whoops total brain fart. I meant I could've gone or could have.

snoofle · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
...he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"?

I could go (past tense, contrasted with the present tense: I could go) I could have gone I might have gone I may have gone File not found

What's so hard?

Code Dependent · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

snoofle:
campkev:
...he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"?

I could go (past tense, contrasted with the present tense: I could go) I could have gone I might have gone I may have gone File not found

What's so hard?

I'm sticking with "I used to be able to go." Or, if you want redneck vernacular, "I usta cud go."

derula · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

comment = ""
for i in 0..9
  case i
  when 0 then comment << "R"
  when 1 then comment << "u"
  when 2 then comment << "b"
  when 3 then comment << "y"
  when 4 then comment << " "
  when 5 then comment << ">"
  when 6 then comment << " "
  when 7 then comment << "%"
  when 8 then comment << "s"
  when 9 then comment << "!"
  end
end
printf comment, "VB"

Someone You Know · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

campkev · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

ContraCorners · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Sofa King:
As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.
You're telling us not one of 300 people could come up with "I could have gone?" That seems implausible.

No, someone came up with "I could have gone", it just isn't right.

I have gone.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

But the present tense of "I was able to go" is "I am able to go", not "I can go". Explain that please.

Kermos · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

The Wanderer:
Sofa King:
As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.
You're telling us not one of 300 people could come up with "I could have gone?" That seems implausible.
That was my first thought as well, but isn't that a conditional (thus, past tense of "I could go") rather than a strict past tense?
Which would (now that I think of it) seem to lead to "I can have gone" as the correct answer, but since I went through three other possibilities leading to it, the original point of English being complicated in this respect does seem to have some validity.

Easy in Japanese though. :)

行く - iku- go 行った - itta - went 行ける - ikeru - can go / be able to go 行けた - iketa - have gone / was able to go

I swear, the next person that looks at me all wide eyed when they find out I study Japanese and asks me, in English nonetheless, "Isn't that too difficult?" is gonna be beaten senseless with a rubber chicken.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

WayneCollins:
No, a for-case is completely retarded. A while-case is a perfectly valid way of running a state machine.

I disagree.

For starters, why have the complexity of a variable state machine when a linear one is all you need? If all you need is 'nextState = currState+1' then there is no need for a nextState function, in fact a nextState function would be more error prone.

There is also the other use for for-case constructs, which is when you have some function you need to execute between each state (debugging begin a common example).

If you muck with the state variable in your loop construct, you'll complicate the hell out of your state machine...

If you have to add real complexity in order to avoid perceived complexity, you are doing it wrong ;p

A while-case loop is perfectly valid but not always superior to for-case when putting together state machines.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

SCB:
But the present tense of "I was able to go" is "I am able to go", not "I can go". Explain that please.

There isn't a difference between "I can verb" and "I am able to verb."

pscs · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

[quote user="ContraCorners"] No, someone came up with "I could have gone", it just isn't right.[/quote] I have gone.[/quote]

That's not right either.

I could have gone might be past tense or might be conditional. So it might have been right. I might have gone is also possibly conditional.

"I was able to go" is right, also "I had been able to go". You have to convert the modal verb 'can' to the 'to be able to' form. You have difficulty converting modal verbs (verbs which change the 'mode' of another verb) to past tense.

With 'I can go', the verb is 'to go', the 'can' changes the 'mode' of that verb. 'can' is not the verb.

Many languages don't have modal verbs, it's generally Germanic ones which do. Romantic languages change the verb form itself.

We had this at my kids' school - they had to give the future tense of various verbs (at age 7), 'can' being one of them. I did suggest various options to my son, either to be a smart-alec and suggest that modal verbs might not be the best examples for this exercise, or to be awkward and take 'to can' as the verb, and write 'They will can the beans in the factory tomorrow' as the answer, but eventually we just said 'They will be able to go cycling at the weekend'.

WayneCollins · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Neeneko:
WayneCollins:
No, a for-case is completely retarded. A while-case is a perfectly valid way of running a state machine.

I disagree.

For starters, why have the complexity of a variable state machine when a linear one is all you need? If all you need is 'nextState = currState+1' then there is no need for a nextState function, in fact a nextState function would be more error prone.

There is also the other use for for-case constructs, which is when you have some function you need to execute between each state (debugging begin a common example).

If you muck with the state variable in your loop construct, you'll complicate the hell out of your state machine...

If you have to add real complexity in order to avoid perceived complexity, you are doing it wrong ;p

A while-case loop is perfectly valid but not always superior to for-case when putting together state machines.

I see what you mean. If your state machine has next state almost always equal to current state + 1, then for-case is less verbose and error prone. On the other hand, if at a given state you must unconditionally go to state + 1, why have separate states for those two parts?

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

SCB:
But the present tense of "I was able to go" is "I am able to go", not "I can go". Explain that please.

The verb "can" has no infinitive. The closest is "to be able to". Dependent formations will not be 100% reversible.

Technically, English doesn't have infinitives, most tenses, or even a grammar in the sense of inflected languages like Latin and old Greek (from which grammar terms were derived).

It has "-s/-es" for plural, "-'s/-'" for possessive, "-ed" for past tense, and "-ly" for adverbs. Everything else is a cobbled word-order-based mishmash of exceptions.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

The example might prove that there is some complexity in English, but it certainly doesn't prove anything about English in relationship to any other language. The reality of language learning difficulty has a lot to do with the age you pick up the language and the relationship of the language to the native language. I'll bet a native German speaker wouldn't find English as difficult and complex to learn as they would Chinese.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Yeah, the verb 'can' is a bit weird. And English spelling is very oddball.

But there's an awful lot that's SIMPLE about English.

Few tenses (compared to some languages).
Only one (modern) form of 'you'.
The only noun-verb agreement is singular vs plural. There's no need for noun-adjective agreement.
No 'gender' for inanimate objects.

pscs · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
pscs:
There are so many exceptions to this "rule", I've never been convinced how useful it is (science, eiderdown, deity, seismic, Keith, caffeine, seeing, ancient, society etc etc etc).

While I agree with you that the rule is almost useless, some of your examples are kind of WTF themselves. The rule is only meant for situations where the i and the e make a single sound.

Agreed, but it doesn't say that. It isn't "I before E except after C as long as it's only a single sound....."

Also, that still goes wrong with Keith, Seismic, ancient etc.

Also, eider is Swedish, so you can hardly expect an English grammar rule to apply.

But... most English words aren't English, they're mostly originally derived from German, French, Scandinavian, Latin, Greek etc.

Eider may have originally been a Swedish word, but if you go to a department store and ask for an Eiderdown (at least in the UK), they'll sell you a quilt (probably without any duck feathers in), they won't go hunting for a Swedish-English dictionary. We have co-opted the word as an English word.

IIRC the 'I before E' rule does apply more to words with certain languages as the root language, but that doesn't really help most people. Many of the 'strangenesses' of English make more sense if you know which language the words came from originally and have different rules depending on the words' origins.

English is just so bizarre because it is a mixture of so many different languages shoved together. This actually seems to make it easier than other languages for people from other countries to learn enough to make themselves understood - despite what logic would suggest. You could say that English is sort of a 'natural' Esperanto ;)

Kermos · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Neil:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

The example might prove that there is some complexity in English, but it certainly doesn't prove anything about English in relationship to any other language. The reality of language learning difficulty has a lot to do with the age you pick up the language and the relationship of the language to the native language. I'll bet a native German speaker wouldn't find English as difficult and complex to learn as they would Chinese.

I actually happen to be a native German speaker and while I picked up English obviously without a problem, I don't find Japanese particularly difficult or complex. Learning to read is time consuming (writing has an alphabet one can fall back to, unlike Chinese) but grammar is not bad because it is extremely consistent.

I honestly though did never realize how complex English can be (and even worse yet German) until studying Japanese and trying to explain English to friends who have never set foot into an English speaking country.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

WayneCollins:
On the other hand, if at a given state you must unconditionally go to state + 1, why have separate states for those two parts?

The only times I've seen such a construct being used sanely were either:

(a) states were pulled from a function table which, while always linear, changed according to some earlier condition such as gender, region, user type, website of origin, etc. nice clean way of having data-driven linear state machines.

(b) cases where each state (possibly from a table or generic) had some kind of prologue/epilogue function. So things like:

for(1..n):
{
   doStuff()
   switch(i)
      1: Something()
         break;
      2: Something else()
         break;
      n: Blah blah()
         break;
   doOtherStuff()
}

and I guess (c) times where you want to use the switch-case fallthrough, which is probably more mess then it is worth but sometimes really helpful. i.e.:

for(1..n):
{
   doStuff()
   switch(i)
      1: Something()
         //fall through, so (1) runs (1) and (2)
      2: Something else()
         break;
      n: Blah blah()
         break;
   doOtherStuff()
}

hallo.amt · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

To be honest, I do not see any problems with that. Any good compiler could probably optimize that out... Or maybe not.

But in Germany phone numbers can be from something like (0 89) 1 23 getting a little more complex with (0 76 71) 2 03 (0 76 24) 98 55 46 1 to somethiing like (0 24 95) 1 25 46 39 - 2 45 41

I do not see how this code could handle these numbers. It is not really complex but the grouping is starting on the right hand side.

So let's praise this great developer

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Reminds me of my former collegue. He was able to do atol (ascii to long integer for the C challenged) in 150 lines of C code. He used the same 'paradigm' as todays WTF, but extended it by using 10 different for loops with integrated switch/case using a big switch/case

something like that:

char *buf;
int len = strlen(buf);
long res = 0;

switch(len) 
{
  case 1:
    for(i=0; i<1; i++) {
      switch(i) {
        case 0: res = buf[0]-'0';
      }
    }
    break;

  case 2:
    for(i=0; i<2; i++)
    {
      switch(i)
      {
        case 0: 
          res = buf[0]-'0'; 
          break;
        case 1: 
          res = res * 10 + buf[1]-'0'; 
          break;
      }
    }
    break;

  case 3:
    for(i=0; i<3; i++) 
    {
      switch(i) 
      {
        case 0: 
          res = buf[0]-'0'; 
          break;
        case 1: 
          res = res * 10 + buf[1]-'0'; 
          break;
        case 2: 
          res = res * 100 + buf[2]-'0'; 
          break;
      }
    }
    break;
...

you get the point.

(again for the C challenged one could write it this way:

char *buf;
int len = strlen(buf);
long res = 0;

for(i=0; i<len; i++)
  res = res*10 + (buf[i]-'0');
</pre>
or even better, using the standard library:
long res = atol(buf);

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Kermos:
The Wanderer:
Sofa King:
You're telling us not one of 300 people could come up with "I could have gone?" That seems implausible.
That was my first thought as well, but isn't that a conditional (thus, past tense of "I could go") rather than a strict past tense?
Which would (now that I think of it) seem to lead to "I can have gone" as the correct answer, but since I went through three other possibilities leading to it, the original point of English being complicated in this respect does seem to have some validity.

Easy in Japanese though. :)

Well, of course. Japanese is far more regular than English in that respect. It's figuring out the cases where it is irregular, and the ways in which it can be warped in common usage (leaving out words and so forth), which get complicated.

Well, that and the kanji. But that's mostly a matter of practice.

Kermos:
行く - iku- go 行った - itta - went 行ける - ikeru - can go / be able to go 行けた - iketa - have gone / was able to go
I swear, the next person that looks at me all wide eyed when they find out I study Japanese and asks me, in English nonetheless, "Isn't that too difficult?" is gonna be beaten senseless with a rubber chicken.

Japanese isn't terribly complicated, but except for the basics, it isn't what I'd call easy. English is significantly worse, yes, but people who ask that kind of question in English probably didn't learn it as a second language.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

What about "I went"?

CAPTCHA: pecus

RobFreundlich · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

ricecake:
SenTree:
Arlen Cuss:
'i' before 'e', except after 'c' ...
weird ...
Or sounding like 'a' as in "neighbor" or "weigh". Not the most leisurely of rhymes. I think I'm going to have a seizure.

A nice sentence to remember some common exceptions, courtesy of my wife's grandmother:

The weird foreigner netiher seizes leisure nor forfeits height.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Joining the OT language discussion I refer you to the great essay "The awful german language" by Mark Twain (available online, easy found via Google). Now who's worse? ;-)

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
dpm:
Yeah, the code sucks, but at least the length is verified before they try to access all ten digits they expect to be there.
Using the same verification standard, I have verified that my ****** is 10 inches long.

Your banger?

Captcha: jugis

Someone You Know · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

Thank you.

For the record, and since no one seems to have objected to this one yet, "I used to be able to go" is the imperfect tense, not the past tense.

This is complicated by the fact that the words "I was able to go" could also be used for the imperfect tense.

DaveK · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Code Dependent:
Anon:
I could of gone?
I could of gone, except I of to of something to eat first.

Don't be mean, he did say he wasn't a native speaker, and if you've only heard it said, "could've gone" sounds a lot like "could of".

So he's not a native speaker of English, he's a Brummie?

A Nonny Mouse · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
campkev:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

Thank you.

For the record, and since no one seems to have objected to this one yet, "I used to be able to go" is the imperfect tense, not the past tense.

This is complicated by the fact that the words "I was able to go" could also be used for the imperfect tense.

"i could have gone" and "i was able to go" mean exactly the same thing

Benanov · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

The "can" throws a wrench in it. I believe the only tense that works with "can" is past perfect: "I could have gone."

(I think subjunctive is the correct tense in Spanish. It's been ten years since I took Spanish.)

"I can go any time I like" "I could have gone any time I liked"

I can go to the store I could've gone to the store

Edit: ninja'd

English is interesting--unlike negatives (where each negative term is like multiplying the statement by -1) I think you have to convert all verbs to agree and use past tense.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

I used to work for a company where this method of writing was standard - even approved of. No-one could explain why they did it - they just did it.

Kermos · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

John:
I used to work for a company where this method of writing was standard - even approved of. No-one could explain why they did it - they just did it.

I am really glad your comment starts with "I used to..."

campkev · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

A Nonny Mouse:
"i could have gone" and "i was able to go" mean exactly the same thing

Really? Would you ever say "I could have gone" about something you actually went to?

Code Dependent · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Neil:
The reality of language learning difficulty has a lot to do with the age you pick up the language

Definitely true. I have a friend who took French in college, but has not used it since. She remembers the basic rules, but has forgotten most of the words and phrases. She recently started working as a nanny for a couple who have six month old and three year old daughters. The father is native German, the mother native French; they moved to the United States about four years ago. The father only speaks to his children in German, and the mother only in French.

The three year old not only speaks fluent German, French and English, but intermingles them. She isn't really aware of them as separate languages. For example, my friend told me the girl said to her, "Miss Linda, come with me into the salon." In the US it's called a living room, not a salon.

The girl wanted Linda to read her a book, but all her books are in German or French. So Linda picked a French one and did the best she could by calling on her college French classes. But the little girl started laughing at her and said she sounded silly. Linda said, "But can you tell what I am saying?" and she answered, "No!"

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
A Nonny Mouse:
"i could have gone" and "i was able to go" mean exactly the same thing

Really? Would you ever say "I could have gone" about something you actually went to?

I came to a junction in the maze, I could have gone either way but the force was strong at that time and guided me down the right path.

Code Dependent · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
For the record, and since no one seems to have objected to this one yet, "I used to be able to go" is the imperfect tense, not the past tense.
This is complicated by the fact that the words "I was able to go" could also be used for the imperfect tense.

Now you're really getting nitpicky.

Once upon a time, I could go. In the past, I could have chosen to go. I once had the power of choice whether to go or not. I was once able to go.

And "was once" == "used to be".

So tear it up, Language Maestro... I'm still right.

campkev · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

EndlessWaves:
campkev:
A Nonny Mouse:
"i could have gone" and "i was able to go" mean exactly the same thing

Really? Would you ever say "I could have gone" about something you actually went to?

I came to a junction in the maze, I could have gone either way but the force was strong at that time and guided me down the right path.

Exactly, you COULD HAVE gone either way, but you didn't go both ways(not that there's anything wrong with that), you went ONE way.

You would never say "I could have gone to the concert, so I left right after work," would you?

Spectre · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Tsk, tsk. All those comments and nobody thought about using dynamically generated code to minimize the code size. Behold:

set i 0

foreach char {W T F {\u203d}} {
  lappend foreach $i
  lappend switch $i "puts -nonewline $char"
  incr i
}

set switch "switch \$i {$switch}"
set foreach [list foreach i $foreach $switch]

eval $foreach

I won't tell you which language it is, because it should be immediately obvious. ;=]

campkev · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Code Dependent:
I'm sticking with "I used to be able to go."

Sorry, but "used to be able to" != "was able to".

"Yesterday, I was able to bench press 250 for the first time." "Yesterday, I used to be able to bench press 250 for the first time."

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

A Nonny Mouse:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Someone You Know:
campkev:
Reminds me of the welcome speech from the Commandant of the Defense Language Institute. He said that once we got into our courses, some of us might start complaining about how hard the languages are to learn and how weird they are, but really, none of them are as hard to learn or as screwed up as English. As an example, he asked if anyone could give the past tense of "I can go"? Not one of the 300 or so people in the room, including me, could do it.

I am surprised no one has yet suggested "I was able to go".

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner!

Thank you.

For the record, and since no one seems to have objected to this one yet, "I used to be able to go" is the imperfect tense, not the past tense.

This is complicated by the fact that the words "I was able to go" could also be used for the imperfect tense.

"i could have gone" and "i was able to go" mean exactly the same thing

At risk of introducing anything beyond speculation to a WTF comment thread, here are some references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_modal_auxiliary_verb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar#Conditional_forms

"I was able to go" is past tense. "I could have gone" is conditional perfect. It needs something else to go with it. "Did you go to the concert?" "Yes, I was able to go." "I could have gone, but I was too busy posting on TDWTF".

"I could have gone" has the same meaning as "I would have been able go", which is very different from "I was able to go".

And to the original question, "I could go" works just fine. "Could" is the past tense of "can". The fact that "I could go" is ALSO a present conditional just confuses things.

Past: "Could you lift the desk by yourself when you moved yesterday?" "Yes, I could lift it. I'm done moving." [Yes I was able to lift it]

Present conditional: "Could you lift the desk by yourself if I were sitting on it?" "Yes, I could lift it. I'm Superman, I don't even have to try". [Yes I would be able to lift it]

Someone You Know · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Code Dependent:
Someone You Know:
For the record, and since no one seems to have objected to this one yet, "I used to be able to go" is the imperfect tense, not the past tense.
This is complicated by the fact that the words "I was able to go" could also be used for the imperfect tense.
Now you're really getting nitpicky.

Once upon a time, I could go. In the past, I could have chosen to go. I once had the power of choice whether to go or not. I was once able to go.

And "was once" == "used to be".

So tear it up, Language Maestro... I'm still right.

Well, if you view the difference between the imperfect tense and the past tense as "really nitpicky", that's fine — I'd probably agree with you — but that doesn't mean the difference doesn't exist.

If you say "I used to able to go", you are saying that at one time you were able to go, but you no longer are able to go. That's the imperfect tense (a.k.a. "past continuous"). Logically it's a sort of special case of the past tense, which just says that at one time you were able to go, and doesn't say anything about what you can do now. The confusion stems partly from the fact that in the case of this particular verb, the plain past tense is hardly ever actually used by anyone.

I would agree, though, that "I could go" is commonly used as the past tense of "I can go". I don't know if that's truly a correct usage or just a common misusage.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

I'm afraid it actually seems to be about 1.25cm long

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

campkev:
dpm:
Yeah, the code sucks, but at least the length is verified before they try to access all ten digits they expect to be there.
Using the same verification standard, I have verified that my ****** is 10 inches long.

I'm afraid it actually seems to be about 1.25cm long

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Since this is an important case, I've added a Facebook group for it: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56420033725.

Please consider joining: it is important that this misuse is stopped.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

diaphanein:
There are: 7 while loops. 25 for loops. 27 nested switch statements. 81 cases for those switch statements. 261 if statements. 123 else statements.

And a partridge (family) in a pair of (depth-first) trees.

2009-03-09 Reply Admin

I lived in an area quite intolerant of any outsiders. An outsider would be one or both of non-white or non-English/German origin. I had "mixed" parentage (one parent was French), but blue-eyed and blond, so I was acceptable.

The students, yours truly excluded, would harass any French teachers to the point of quitting.

One lesson was common sayings about one's health: <<mal à la tête>>, <<mal au ventre>>, <<mal aux dents>>, etc, most of which were immediately obvious. One saying though <<mal au coeur>> caused us trouble: heartsick?, heart attack?, heartburn?, until one doofus said "I have a hard-on", much laughter ensued, followed by rampant and uncontrolled chair squeaking, and no more work got done that day.

Code Dependent · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
If you say "I used to able to go", you are saying that at one time you were able to go, but you no longer are able to go.

I used to be able to benchpress 200; let's see if I still can.

Someone You Know:
I would agree, though, that "I could go" is commonly used as the past tense of "I can go". I don't know if that's truly a correct usage or just a common misusage.

I see it as future: "I could go if I wanted to; but I don't want to, so I won't go."

Someone You Know · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Code Dependent:
I see it as future: "I could go if I wanted to; but I don't want to, so I won't go."

As Anon pointed out above, that's a present conditional, which in the case of this verb happens to look the same.

Code Dependent · 2009-03-09 Reply Admin

Someone You Know:
As Anon pointed out above, that's a present conditional, which in the case of this verb happens to look the same.

I excelled at English all through school, but that was a very long time ago, and I've had no need of the technical intricacies of that knowledge since. It's faded with disuse.

I love good wordplay far more than formal correctness.

Formatting a Phone Number - The Long Version

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