explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1926: Bad Code

2023-01-13T04:23:47Z

172.70.55.112: ~~~~

Is it just me or is the fact that this page was created by a bad coder slightly funny? [[User:Halo422|Halo422]] ([[User talk:Halo422|talk]]) 16:56, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
:Sometimes on this wiki we change the created by text to something relevant to the comic Halo. [[User:DPS2004|DPS2004]] ([[User talk:DPS2004|talk]]) 16:58, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
:Slightly, yes. :oP[[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.16|141.101.76.16]] 14:13, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

"MAY be the same Cueball and Ponytail as the Code Quality series"???!?! As far as I'm concerned, this is the latest entry in the Code Quality series! Oh, and my interpretation of her "Wait, crap." was her saying she realized he's actually done that before, thrown hammers at that wall. I feel like the giving-him-bad-ideas explanation makes more sense, though. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 17:56, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

:I don't see this that way. Cueball from Code Quality series was a beginner, self-taught coder. This one seems much more mature with programming skills.[[User:Kshksh|kshksh]] ([[User talk:Kshksh|talk]]) 20:45, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

:: That happens sometimes. I.e. people get better over time. But in this case I'd agree with Ponytail that Cueball is not showing "programming skills and is not showing maturity.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.40|108.162.216.40]] 20:35, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

:::I know that people get better over time, but I'm picking more on indirect clues here. Cueball comments that "it's nothing wierd ''THIS TIME''", which means he's written many wierd projects. This means that he likes programming, and possibly have written some non-wierd projects. He also says "nothing depends on it", which means that he has written something that ''could'' depend on it. And while we have no direct indication of how much time passed in between comics, all of the Code Quality seems to happen in one sitting, while this is obviousely different situation.[[User:Kshksh|kshksh]] ([[User talk:Kshksh|talk]]) 20:45, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

:::: I've usually understood that Cueball isn't so much a beginner (in other Code Quality strips), but that he never bothered learning GOOD programming (format, syntax, efficiency, etc). He slaps together code and tries to nudge it and twist it into working, ending up needing assistance to get it done. Brute force programming, no finesse... Instead of using a loop, copies a command sequence 10 times over. That kind of thing. Besides, if he's always just a beginner, why is he always programming? Seems to me he has a passion for it and as such he keeps trying, but never bothers trying to improve (and, honestly, I feel like it takes a large, robust program to inspire such colourful comments from Ponytail. A simple beginner Hello, World progam couldn't have much to say other than "Put a semicolon here" and "You should indent these lines", stuff like that). And part of why his code is usually bad is because he writes programs to do weird things, hence his describing this one as not so bad. Actually, in this respect I wonder if this is ALSO related to the "Cueball has the weirdest computer problems" series, essentially tying those two series together: Cueball gets weird problems because he writes bad code to do weird things which has unexpected results. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:49, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The hammer-throwing may also be a call-back to xkcd 905, "Homeownership", where Cueball accidentally destroys his home by getting carried away drilling holes in the walls?

Wait, so nobody thinks calling it "Bad Code" instead of the prior "Code Quality" is a veiled reference to Mr Robot? Randall clearly watches the show; I thought he was referring to the show's repeated assertion that careless people are like bad code, their actions dangerously in need of revision. IE that some people have a knack for really messing stuff up which reaches far beyond the minimal effort they put into choosing their actions.

I'm almost certain that "parsing html" is a reference to this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454
[[User:Waterlubber|Waterlubber]] ([[User talk:Waterlubber|talk]]) 20:16, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Isn't it ponytail who tries to destroy the wall, since by Cueball's logic it doesn't matter if she does it?

Without the title text, I'd believe the wall is actually (already) bearing some kind of dependency into Cueball's spreadsheet, hence the reaction from Ponytail. Rather than giving him ideas to destroy it. It still makes sense because he's the kind of person to do messy things like that. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.46|162.158.92.46]] 00:29, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

I just loaded this xkcd comic (7/20/2021, 21:45 Pacific Daylight Time), and the page took time loading, then just shows "Bad Code" *UNDER* the title, in a different font. Page may be using some disfunctional code to display the comic, which, when it fails, displays "Bad Code".

Haskell, incidentally, has powerful parser combinators, one of the crown jewels of the language, that make it easy to parse HTML, or for that matter, anything. So, Cueball is just likely bad at Haskell. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.55.112|172.70.55.112]] 04:23, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

2705: Spacetime Soccer

2022-12-03T23:00:44Z

172.70.55.112: Undo revision 300352 by 172.71.142.171 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2705
| date = November 30, 2022
| title = Spacetime Soccer
| image = spacetime_soccer_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x280px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Spacetime Soccer, known outside the United States as '4D Football' is a now-defunct sport. Infamous for referee decisions hinging on inconsistent definitions of simultaneity, it is also known for the disappearance of many top players during... [more]
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FOUR-DIMENSIONAL GOALIE - I still don't know what the offside rule actually is. I think it might... [more]. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic proposes Spacetime Soccer, an impossible{{Citation needed}} sport consisting of a "regular" soccer field with a gravitational well in the center of it. This comic was likely published in relation to the {{w|2022 FIFA World Cup}} which, due to numerous controversies surrounding policies and conditions in the host country, {{w|Qatar}}, was prevalent in the 2022 news cycle for weeks.

Judging by the size of the blackest part of the indentation, presuming that indicates the event horizon of the {{w|black hole}}, the radius of the {{w|event horizon}} would be approximately 9.6 meters and the singularity's mass 6.5×10<sup>27</sup> kilograms, or more than 1082 times the mass of the Earth [[https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/schwarzschild-radius]].

Not only would it be impossible for human players to travel through more than three spatial dimensions at will, it would also be very difficult to keep track of score and rules such as offsides.

{{w|Offside (association football)|Offside}} is a rule in soccer that applies to players who are in certain positions relative to the boundaries of the {{w|Football_pitch|pitch}}, the ball, and the second-last opponent on the opposing team. Players in such positions are eligible for being judged guilty of an offside offence if they become involved in the ongoing play before rectifying their status. It is of special importance to know the different players' positions at the exact moment the ball gets passed, rather than when the passed ball may be received or the offside player is otherwise considered active. But in relativistic spacetime there is no universal definition of an exact moment, beyond a single point, as time may run at different speeds for multiple observers in varying situations (where they are moving relative to each other, are influenced by differing local gravity or – as seems very likely in this example – both). An additional joke is that even in regular soccer, the offside rule is notoriously difficult to fully understand (or explain to someone).

The title text is written in the style of the beginning to a Wikipedia article on the topic. It alludes to the fact that most countries in the world refer to the sport with that particular obscure offside rule as football (or some translation thereof, like fútbol or Fußball) while the USA, Canada, Ireland, Japan and Australia tend to call it soccer, which comes from the British shortening of "association football", because they already used the name "football" for gridiron football, Gaelic football, or Australian football (which share a common ancestry with the other sport, along with "rugby football", hence the name).

==Transcript==
:[On a gray "rubber sheet" visualization of a gravity well is drawn some of the lines of a standard Association Football (Soccer) pitch. Visible features of the standard pitch are the outside borders, the goals and the small and large boxes around each goal. Absent are the corner quarter circles, the penalty spots and associated D, and the center line. The central circle is lost/concealed by the curvature of the gravity well. There are a number of other lines encircling and radial to the gravity well, they are visually identical to the familiar pitch markings so it is unclear whether these are intended to be drawn on the pitch or merely indications of the shape of the surface, or both, for the purpose of helping players to avoid the well. The lengthwise field boundary line on the visible far side partly follows/is partly followed by a suitable radial line before splitting off and conspicuously curving within the respective lip of the well to rejoin the radial line emerging at the complimentary angle in the opposing half of the field. A total of twenty figures can be seen on the pitch. Two are standing near the goal mouths, while the rest are distributed fairly evenly around the field, ten on each side of the middle. As they are all white stick figures on the gray surface, it is impossible to say which are on each team or if one is the referee. Five are within the inner circle around the well, and are distorted or tilted by the increased slope of the surface. A ball with motion lines is landing by the feet of one player who is running up one wing near, but left, of the central part of the field. This player is close to but not within the deeper part of the well. The players seems to be both women and men, as several look like Cueball and some like Hairy, and also many look like Megan and some like Ponytail. The color of the field becomes darker the deeper it goes into the well, from the normal gray color that extends from the two ends of the pitch to about halfway to the center of the field, in six steps until it is almost black at the deepest part of the well that is visible over the rim of the near part of the field.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Spacetime Soccer got a lot of criticism for how many players fell into the gravity well, but what ultimately doomed it was the advanced mathematics required to figure out the offsides rule.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Soccer]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]

2706: Bendy

2022-12-03T23:00:09Z

172.70.55.112: Undo revision 300354 by 162.158.107.55 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2706
| date = December 2, 2022
| title = Bendy
| image = bendy_2x.png
| imagesize = 291x209px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Squaring the circle is really easy with some good clamps.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created while BENDING OVER PULLBACKWARDS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The original triangle, without bendy lines, is an example of a {{w|Pythagorean triple}}. Randall 'simplifies' this by adding squiggles to the two sides in order to make them longer and therefore match the length of the hypotenuse (longest side). The idea is that this would allow one to arbitrarily define side lengths and therefore avoid doing calculations to figure them out, but in practice this is not possible in geometry as the sides will no longer be lines and the shape would be by definiton no longer a triangle. The way these calculations are used in real life also render this method unusable, as the point of the calculations Randall is trying to avoid is typically to determine the length of an already-existing side. The joke here is that Randall is trying to solve a geometric problem (that is actually already solved, in this case) with non-conventional methods unrelated to the problem's application.

This comic may be a reference to axis breaks in graphs, which shrink large segments and enhance readability and are denoted by a wiggly line on the axis in question.

The title-text talks about "{{w|Squaring the circle}}", a famous geometry problem based around constructing a square with the same area as a given circle with a compass and straightedge, which was proven to be impossible (even with more powerful forms of construction, such as marked straightedges or origami) in 1882 as pi is a transcendental number (Not to be confused with {{w|Tarski's circle-squaring problem|circle-squaring}}.) However, it then goes on to describe a way to literally turn one of these bendy shapes from a circle into a square, namely using clamps.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[There are two right triangles. One triangle has side lengths of 3, 4, and 5, and is scribbled out in red. The other triangle has the same general shape but with the catheti appearing like longer but bent lines, so that all the side lengths equal 5 if straightened.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Huge geometry breakthrough: Turns out those lines we make triangles out of are bendy!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]