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> An old joke is that there are only two hard things in computer science: cache validation, and naming things. Way to ruin the joke! The joke is that that are
by pwinnski 4y ago
> An old joke is that there are only two hard things in computer science: cache validation, and naming things.
Way to ruin the joke! The joke is that that are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
See, now it's a joke.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoMy go to version is: there are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and cache invalidation.
- eckesicle 4y agoand exactly once delivery, and exactly once delivery.
- gorkish 4y agoI'm sorry. I missed that. Can you please tell me again?
- MAGZine 4y agoit was in the original joke.
- remram 4y agoIf you add anything else, you ruin the "off-by-one" part.
- tmccrary55 4y agoThen there are three hard things
- pjmorris 4y agoI would tell you a UDP joke but you probably won't get it.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoI heard a good source routing joke but I don't know who to tell it to next
- classified 4y agoI could tell you a mathematical joke but that would be going off on a tangent.
- Ancapistani 4y agoNo - there are three hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming thi, concurrencyngs, and off-by-one errors.
- cmpb 4y agoI really like this version of the joke, but it's impossible to tell during regular face-to-face conversation
- kroolik 4y agoYou can pronounce it with the cardinals 1st Cache invalidation 3rd Concurrency 2nd Naming things 4th Off-by-one errors
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoThat could work but it would be easy to get the timing wrong. Also, nit: those are ordinals (since they specify the order). Cardinals would be one, two, three, four.
- kroolik 4y agoNaming is hard ;) But thanks for the nitpick
- phendrenad2 4y agoCache invalidation, concurrency (say slowly), naming things, off-by-one errors, and concurrency!
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoTwo threads walk into a bar. The bartender says, "I don't race want any like conditions time last!"
- atleta 4y agoI wouldn't say he ruined the joke. The original saying quite obviously only covered the first two issues. The off-by-one error was only added later. Though it definitely did enhance the joke factor. https://www.karlton.org/2017/12/naming-things-hard/ https://www.karlton.org/2017/12/naming-things-hard/
- ysavir 4y agoBut without the line about off-by-one errors it isn't a joke, just a straight forward statement.
- jacobolus 4y agoThe joke is that these two things seem trivial (perhaps even outside the scope of the real “problem solving” parts of the job) and computing is full of apparently much trickier problems. But in practice everyone repeatedly runs into trouble with the same couple basic issues. It’s a joke because it’s not literally true – the other problems in computing can be incredibly hard, sometimes taking years of work to figure out – but like any good joke it does also have a kernel of truth and hopefully makes the listener do some reflection. Adding “off by one errors” is a riff which only makes sense once people are already familiar with the original joke. It can be funny but also kind of misses/obscures the original point.
- runiq 4y agoAnd scope creep!
- nine_k 4y agoThe best take on that joke I heard was like so. "Computer science has two problems: that we only have one joke, and that it's not all that funny".
- pwinnski 4y agoI told my 12-year-old this joke last week, and she laughed out loud. Then again, she had just (again) made an off-by-one error in her Python code, which she had variables named "stuff" and "things."