Difference between revisions of "Talk:1671: Arcane Bullshit"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I think this comic refers to keeping or fixing 30 over year old programs and their "bs" factor. At which the most extreme will be something like gentoo where you have to compile everything first before doing anything productive. (Sorry gentoo users didnt meant to start a flame war) {{unsigned ip|103.31.5.240}}
 
I think this comic refers to keeping or fixing 30 over year old programs and their "bs" factor. At which the most extreme will be something like gentoo where you have to compile everything first before doing anything productive. (Sorry gentoo users didnt meant to start a flame war) {{unsigned ip|103.31.5.240}}
  
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:While installing applications on gentoo takes longer because it's being compiled, it's the time of the COMPUTER. You can do something else while it's compiling. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
  
 
I'm afraid the explanation misses the point completely ... Rather than excursion to programming techniques and languages, the sociology behind that should be focused on. Programmers were considered mages (hence "arcane", or do I get the meaning of it wrong, not being native speaker?), and don't forget also that 80's were the time when the GNU project started. The title text then may refer to changing standards in (released) software quality - I remember my ZX Spectrum crashing because of overheating, but not because of software problems. And its system was written in assembler that is kinda badmouthed by the current version of the explanation, in favour of sophisticated languages. Then, with DOS, a problem emerged from time to time, but not a big deal. Then, with Windows 95, the system crashed daily ... Nowadays, programmers just throw their bullshit code on users, and break "everyone else's computer", also thanks to Internet etc. It has very little to do with programming language choice and jumps/gotos. - [[Special:Contributions/141.101.95.123|141.101.95.123]] 06:58, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 
I'm afraid the explanation misses the point completely ... Rather than excursion to programming techniques and languages, the sociology behind that should be focused on. Programmers were considered mages (hence "arcane", or do I get the meaning of it wrong, not being native speaker?), and don't forget also that 80's were the time when the GNU project started. The title text then may refer to changing standards in (released) software quality - I remember my ZX Spectrum crashing because of overheating, but not because of software problems. And its system was written in assembler that is kinda badmouthed by the current version of the explanation, in favour of sophisticated languages. Then, with DOS, a problem emerged from time to time, but not a big deal. Then, with Windows 95, the system crashed daily ... Nowadays, programmers just throw their bullshit code on users, and break "everyone else's computer", also thanks to Internet etc. It has very little to do with programming language choice and jumps/gotos. - [[Special:Contributions/141.101.95.123|141.101.95.123]] 06:58, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
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:Agree, the "breaking everyone else's computer" is definitely about low code quality. It's true than programming with "goto" is harder, but maybe that was the reason only people who known how to program was doing it. Nowadays, everyone thinks he can program, but based on number of bugs it's obviously not true. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Revision as of 14:16, 23 April 2016

I was obsessively refreshing XKCD and the new comic popped up. Then I did the same on ExplainXKCD to make an explanation. Here's my first rough-draft attempt. Papayaman1000 (talk) 13:34, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Your explanation confuses OOP with structured programming. Svorkoetter (talk) 15:03, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Developing a kernel is not the same as compiling a kernel. You would, for example, rebuild a Linux kernel after you've added a module, or changed some parameters. Also, the purpose of object-oriented programming is not to solve the problem of spaghetti code. (That problem was solved by structured programming.) It's to enforce principles of abstraction, information hiding and modularity. Krishnanp (talk) 15:20, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

I modified the explanation on OOP to include Structured & Procedural language code and briefly described the 80's era of low level languages. Digital_Night (talk) 15:41, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

OK, I rewrote the kernel compiling explanation to explain why someone would recompile a 80's era kernel. Modular kernels sure are nice! Digital night (talk) 15:50, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Could this be a reference to the large amount of open-source projects using C (an arcane bull* language from the 70s/80s that need 10000 lines ./configure scripts to work) ? 108.162.219.79 16:38, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

T.M.I. 162.158.222.231 18:54, 22 April 2016 (UTC)


I think this comic refers to keeping or fixing 30 over year old programs and their "bs" factor. At which the most extreme will be something like gentoo where you have to compile everything first before doing anything productive. (Sorry gentoo users didnt meant to start a flame war) 103.31.5.240 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

While installing applications on gentoo takes longer because it's being compiled, it's the time of the COMPUTER. You can do something else while it's compiling. -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid the explanation misses the point completely ... Rather than excursion to programming techniques and languages, the sociology behind that should be focused on. Programmers were considered mages (hence "arcane", or do I get the meaning of it wrong, not being native speaker?), and don't forget also that 80's were the time when the GNU project started. The title text then may refer to changing standards in (released) software quality - I remember my ZX Spectrum crashing because of overheating, but not because of software problems. And its system was written in assembler that is kinda badmouthed by the current version of the explanation, in favour of sophisticated languages. Then, with DOS, a problem emerged from time to time, but not a big deal. Then, with Windows 95, the system crashed daily ... Nowadays, programmers just throw their bullshit code on users, and break "everyone else's computer", also thanks to Internet etc. It has very little to do with programming language choice and jumps/gotos. - 141.101.95.123 06:58, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Agree, the "breaking everyone else's computer" is definitely about low code quality. It's true than programming with "goto" is harder, but maybe that was the reason only people who known how to program was doing it. Nowadays, everyone thinks he can program, but based on number of bugs it's obviously not true. -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)