• (cs) in reply to Mythokia
    Mythokia:
    Usually when someone starts the conversation with "are you good with computers?", I expect it to go downhill.

    My answer is always no.

  • random (unregistered)

    Ok, but your brother in law is 9 year old, right?

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    He created a text file with the words "Morph the screen into something cool" and couldn't figure out how to run it

    Well I see the problem! He SHOULD have written "Morph the screen into something cool;" - you need a semi-colon at the end of the command. :-)

    LOL

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Beeblebrox

    Hmmm, just mentioning pointers and multi-threading in the same post sounds risky!

    btw, pointers are not hard to learn, if you can program at all you can understand the concept of a pointer to a memory location (which may or may not be used to store a variable or some object code). The problem with pointers is that they are intrisically unsafe and have no place in a program running in a managed enviroment, which is why they are not supported in their raw form by Java or .net.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to The General
    The General:
    TraumaPony:
    SlyEcho:
    Do not advocate the use of languages other than English in variable names. So that I wouldn't have to figure out what "StavSkladuZmeny", "strUzivatelskeJmeno" and "strUzivatelskeHeslo" mean (in a web service I recently integrated).
    Not everyone speaks English.
    Coding by obscurity? (The last two are UserName and UserPassword.)

    Real programmers don't need to know what their variable name's mean. It's a slippery slope - next they will expect documention that actually reflects how the software actually works!

  • Richard (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    The standard answer is to explain that you work on big industrial computers and don't use PCs at all, so if they have a big industrial mainframe then you may be able to help them, but that PC.....

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    When I tell some people I program games for 360 and PS3, they say "cool! can you get deals on games?" as if I work at Electronics Boutique lol.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to apetrelli

    I'm a computer science academic and I get the same thing with asking to fix data projectors.

    Them: "Oh, you're a computer scientist - can you get the data projector working?"

    Me: "No, I'm a computer scientist, not a roadie."

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Konamiman

    void main?? Yousa crazy!

  • RTM (unregistered)

    It appears the reverse is true as well. I am a technical support agent (Networking, SQL Databases, Hardware, etc) and I am constantly asked to just "program" a feature for the user.

  • James (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    def morphTheScreenIntoSomethingCool():

    ...

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Mythokia
    Mythokia:
    Usually when someone starts the conversation with "are you good with computers?", I expect it to go downhill.

    Years and years ago I worked with a Cisco consultant who, when asked what he did, told people "Routing" so they'd assume he was a plumber, just to avoid these types of questions. ;-)

  • SlyEcho (unregistered) in reply to TraumaPony
    TraumaPony:
    SlyEcho:
    Do not advocate the use of languages other than English in variable names. So that I wouldn't have to figure out what "StavSkladuZmeny", "strUzivatelskeJmeno" and "strUzivatelskeHeslo" mean (in a web service I recently integrated).
    Not everyone speaks English.
    They should at least be able to write their public interfaces using some English words that you can find in any basic dictionary ("User name" and "password" in the examples I gave above).

    I would also like to add that I myself am not a native English speaker. None of our programming staff are, but we still made the decision to write our application in English (variable names etc., fully localized otherwise).

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    charon:
    TraumaPony:
    Not everyone speaks English.

    so they shouldn't touch computers, not to mention programming

    Do you speak greek in your country? No? Why do you have doctors then? Seeing as the vast majority of the medical terminology is greek words written in latin characters. Why don't you just get rid of them and die?

    But then when you have a doctor's meeting with several nationalities they will most probably talk in English. Not to forget that have one and only one word for a given disease whereas in f.e. support I remember that I had to know the position in the f.e. Word menus because they all had localised versions (in the beginning). So you just had to remember that File means Datei in German, Fichier in French, something else in Italian, yet something else in Dutch. So much for ONE menu entry. This method became, of course, useless with the arrival of Office2000 where the positions constantly change.

  • (cs) in reply to Thelonious
    Thelonious:
    When my wife told an acquaintance that I "write computer programs" for a living, she apparently responded "but you can just buy those at the store, can't you?"

    Makes my brain hurt

    that's like: why do we need power plants, at MY home electricity comes out of the plug socket

  • (cs) in reply to nobody
    nobody:
    Orclev:
    Jambon:
    In my experience, a good way to explain programming is to say, "It's like doing math homework, except you get paid for it."
    Except that encourages the mistaken assumption that programming is the same thing as math when it really isn't. It does have some math components, much like cooking occasionally does (admittedly programming has a lot more math than cooking, but still less then in things like Physics/Engineering), but there's a whole lot of non-math in there as well.

    I'm rather sick of getting the same reactions after I tell people I'm a programmer which mostly consist of (besides the ones already mentioned here): "So, you must be really good at math."

    I actually rather hate math for the most part. I'm rather terrible at it honestly. Oh, I can do it in a pinch, especially if I have a calculator handy. But for the most part that's why I'm a programmer, so I can tell the computer to do it and then I don't have to worry about it.

    Of course, this is also where I diverge from what I like to think of as theoretical programmers. I tend to look at a problem from the perspective of trying to find a simple elegant solution, while the theoretical guys are busy trying to write a proof of the problem, model it mathematically, and then calculate the big O for the function they devised. I'm not saying that's bad, and the rest of us non-theoretical programmers need this stuff to be done so we can actually use some of the solutions these guys come up with, but the theoretical guys are not the general case with programmers.

    I never understood this. Both programming and mathematics require the same sort of thought process - understanding a complex problem domain and from it discovering a simple, elegant solution. Mathematical theorems transform equations in much the same way functions transform data. What is the fundamental difference between the two?

    try to put your computer in Hilbert Space...

  • Flydog (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    When people ask me "exactly what do programmers really do?", I respond with "Well, you know how computers programs are all just ones and zeros, my job is to put them in the right order".

  • erwin (unregistered)

    Hi, I have also interesting experience.

    Little background: I studied my PhD at computer science dept. at a department focused on "electrical engineering and computer science". I told this to my neighbor in our house - unfortunately.

    Story: One day, all people from our house, many of them are old people, were about to discuss problems of our house. One item in list was bad received signal for TV broadcasting. My neighbor recalled that I am at that "school electrical engineering" and shared this information very loudly to the audience deducing that I will be able to "repair the antenna and the other things". Eyes of all neverending-series lovers were pointed at me with hope and I felt like total idiot ... You know, in such situation it's impossible to explain anything. Since that time I was the guy who studies at "electrical engineering school but cannot repair that simple antenna"...

  • anonymous (unregistered)

    Does your brother understand that games like Halo are the result of 2-5 YEARS worth of development effort from large (25+) teams of people?

  • chrome (unregistered)

    Yes well, when I was about 9, I thought you could program computers much the same way.

    The Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide disabused me of that notion!

  • Captain Obvious (unregistered)

    How could you be "a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family" at the same time your father is a programmer?

  • Punqtured (unregistered)

    for (int i=0; i<=100; i++) { echo "When people ask if I'm good with computers, respond NO!"; }

  • MatthewT (unregistered)

    Funniest thing I've read all day.

  • Neo (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    He created a text file with the words "Morph the screen into something cool" and couldn't figure out how to run it

    Well I see the problem! He SHOULD have written "Morph the screen into something cool;" - you need a semi-colon at the end of the command. :-)

    printf("/n the funny thing is in my computer class we") printf("/n learned how to open and write simple programs") printf("/n and i get some of the jokes going on here, yay to me ")

  • ThatNinja (unregistered)

    Next time someone askes if you're good with computers/program computers, just say no.

  • Karl (unregistered) in reply to Theo
    Theo:
    That's a nice variation on the kind of calls I constantly get from my family: "You're a computer programmer, right? Could you fix my printer?" ...

    I usually fire right back: "You wouldn't ask a pilot to fix your aeroplane?" ;)

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to John Wilson
    John Wilson:
    Well, he's not that far off. All he then needs to do is explain, nicely, to the computer what he means by "create", "football", "stadium", "players", "start", "game", "when", "user, "spacebar", "presses", "make", "have", "red", "shirt", "white", "sock" and so forth, in excruciating detail using an exacting syntax, and he'll be .01% of the way there :)
    Were you really intending them to run round with no shorts on? Perv!

    That's the problem with natural language programming in a nutshell. Offshoring's not that different either. If you don't explain the obvious in excruciating detail it'll all go very pear-shaped very quickly.

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to anne
    anne:
    I have quite a few friends who are very smart in the liberal arts
    That's the WTF, right there. Do they use Microsoft Works and work in Military Intelligence?
  • Betty (unregistered)

    Your replies prove several points... yes, there are people out there who are grossly misinformed (or uninformed) about what you guys do. Funny. Occasionally. But - and this is the tricky part - how computers work and how programs are written is of no interest to anyone, ever, except programmers. The grammar in nearly all of your replies, on the other hand, is so mindbogglingly bad that it's bitterly clear that almost none of you has every bothered to be really proficient in English. Now... do you go through life with people making fun of that? Probably not. So fucking get back to work, and stop whining about nobody understanding you.

  • redwolf (unregistered)

    Download Halo. Link a batchfile to halo.exe and you are done.

    You are sooooooo bad!! ;-)

  • Tord (unregistered)

    I actually tried that on my first computer just to see if it could possibly work (it didn't, not even after translating my 'program' into english)

  • Ped (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    I totally know how this feels.

    My aunt said she wanted to make sure my education was actually worth 40k/year, so she asked me to 'give her computer more memories'. Obviously, I had already tried to explain why her computer was running slow, at which point she told me she had already diagnosed the problem, and that she knew that windows was hardware and AOL was software.

  • KG (unregistered) in reply to Ped
    Ped:
    I totally know how this feels.

    My aunt said she wanted to make sure my education was actually worth 40k/year, so she asked me to 'give her computer more memories'. Obviously, I had already tried to explain why her computer was running slow, at which point she told me she had already diagnosed the problem, and that she knew that windows was hardware and AOL was software.

    40k/year? Yikes!!! Was that a private / IVY League univ? Didn't you qualify for financial aid?

  • John VanSickle (unregistered) in reply to Konamiman
    Konamiman:
    Well, nothing stops you from creating a program like this:

    --snip--

    Oh yes, you will have to define these three methods an put some code on them, but that's a minor issue. X-D

    The official way of saying this is "the implementation details are left as an exercise for the interested student."
  • gibsonrocker800 (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    LMAO. Good call.

  • nitos (unregistered)

    haha.. Ive laughed for 10 min! haha "maybe he's not a good programmer as everyone thinks" haha great post!

  • CPY (unregistered) in reply to Theo

    You can always use smarts to fight those fools like: You know how to cook right? Build me a nice stove then! or I heard you are good driver, come help me tune up engine.

  • Josh (unregistered) in reply to Mythokia

    I just say no. Basically I flat out lie because I consider they're being rude, so I should be too.

  • Seen it (unregistered)

    "Being a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family"

    . .. ...

    "My dad, a programmer, lent him an unfortunately titled book called "Teach Yourself Java in 24 hours"."

    Seen this on another website and some other dude pointed this out. Which makes this retarded.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to ForcedSterilizationsForAll

    You totally missed the point! Have you ever seen an adult video, ever?

  • harvey mossbauer (corky) (unregistered) in reply to Not a troll
    Not a troll:
    C_Boo:
    SpasticWeasel:
    No, it means that he's probably an MBA
    Wow, random trolls abound today. While many of those attracted to a programming are misogynist, semi-literate basement dwelling social misfits, there are others in the field who have side interests like bathing, occasionally breathing fresh air, and (in some cases) pursuing additional degrees.

    Keep moving along nothing to read here certainly not a troll about stereotypical programmer traits...this is so not a troll

    Actually...after spending the last few days catching up on thedailywtf, I've come to realize that TRWTF is that anyone likes us geeks AT ALL. A large percentage of us are very unlikeable.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to apetrelli

    "2) As a computer expert, you should usually know how to repair a TV-set or a HiFi. "

    ... but I do.

  • Moof (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    Maybe he was using Ruby or Python

  • Tom (unregistered)

    I'm a computer science student in college right now. When I went home for break last year my mother's friend had a computer issue she needed help with. So I tried to help and failed, idk what was wrong it just wouldnt work. She said that I should know how to fix it since I was a CS student. I told her that I wasnt learning how to fix computers and she had the nerve to ask "then why are you majoring in Computers?"

    some people just make me think that the privilege to use computers should come with a computer literacy test.

  • Omgath of Daar (unregistered)

    Jayzus, is your brother-in-law from West Virginia or somewhere? Paddle faster, I hear banjo music!

  • Greg (unregistered)

    Wow, this is both unbelievable funny and unbelievable sad. There's such a gap between expectation and knowlegde, it really hurts :-/

  • Slacker (unregistered) in reply to Mythokia

    There is a simple solution to this. Say 'No', if they then ask why you're in the IT industry just calmly tell them that you're a good bullshitter. Eventually the irony will sink in but in the meantime they'll not bother you.

  • Auro (unregistered)

    i love this story im a programmer too but every time someone want something form me the sentence beginning with "you are an Computer scientist right?..."

    somebody should tell the ppls that computer scientist != computer scientist is :D

  • Tia (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    "Something cool" is also ambiguous. You need to be more specific or compiler won't understand what you want to do.

  • anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    ROFL

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