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Not exactly programming per-se, but cute: A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer from Microsoft are in a car together, driving

Not exactly programming per-se, but cute: A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software engineer from Microsoft are in a car together, driving to a conference. They start down a hill when the brakes give out and they crash into a tree at the bottom of the hill. Luckily no one is seriously injured, and they set out to figure out what happened. The mechanical engineer examines the car and says "I believe a brake line was over-pressured and burst, causing the crash." The electrical engineer looks and say "No, I think it was a short-circuit in the anti-lock braking system." The Microsoft guy stays quiet, so the other two look at him and ask "What do you think happened?" He looks up and say "I don't know, but let's push the car back to the top of the hill and try again." --- A newly wed software engineer from Microsoft and his wife are going to visit her family in the mountains. For some reason they have to travel separately and she arrives before him. After a while the phone rings and the new wife's dad answers. It's the husband. He says "Tell everybody I'll be there in 5 minutes." 35 minutes pass and the phone rings again. The husband says "Tell everybody I'll be there in 2 hours." A minute later he calls again and says "Tell everybody I'll be there in 14 minutes." 45 minutes later the phone rings again and the dad answers and says "You're the guy who designed the Windows progress bar dialog aren't you?"

jolmg 6y ago
https://xkcd.com/612/ https://xkcd.com/612/
thayne 6y ago
I once worked on making a progress bar for a process that had a known number of tasks. Unfortunately not all tasks would take the same amount of time, and it was impossible to know the relative amount of time each task would take beforehand. I did the logical thing, and had the progress bar advance 1/nth every time a task completed, with an animation to make it less jarring. A few weeks later, the product manager came to me and told me I needed to make it so the progress bar kept slowly moving up if no tasks were completed for a certain amount of time, so the user would know that work was still being done. Fine. But what happens if the task takes so long that it goes past the mark for the next completed task? Well, when the task is actually completed, it moves backwards of course.
- knodi123 6y ago
  I made zeno's progress bar; it always keeps moving, but never quite finishes until you send it a :done: event, at which point it wastes half a second animating the remainder of the progress bar. Never had a single complaint, and no one noticed that it had nothing to do with what was going on under the hood.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    Like the current Windows file copy dialog, but using the entire bar instead of the interval between 98% and 100%?

jolmg 6y ago

https://xkcd.com/612/ https://xkcd.com/612/

thayne 6y ago

I once worked on making a progress bar for a process that had a known number of tasks. Unfortunately not all tasks would take the same amount of time, and it was impossible to know the relative amount of time each task would take beforehand. I did the logical thing, and had the progress bar advance 1/nth every time a task completed, with an animation to make it less jarring. A few weeks later, the product manager came to me and told me I needed to make it so the progress bar kept slowly moving up if no tasks were completed for a certain amount of time, so the user would know that work was still being done. Fine. But what happens if the task takes so long that it goes past the mark for the next completed task? Well, when the task is actually completed, it moves backwards of course.

knodi123 6y ago
I made zeno's progress bar; it always keeps moving, but never quite finishes until you send it a :done: event, at which point it wastes half a second animating the remainder of the progress bar. Never had a single complaint, and no one noticed that it had nothing to do with what was going on under the hood.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Like the current Windows file copy dialog, but using the entire bar instead of the interval between 98% and 100%?