An example of a question that can be used to determine if someone will get anything out of studying program is presented:


Read the following statements and tick the box next to the correct answer.

int a = 10; int b = 20; a = b;

The new values of a and b are:

• [ ] a = 20 b = 0
• [ ] a = 20 b = 20
• [ ] a = 0 b = 10
• [ ] a = 10 b = 10
• [ ] a = 30 b = 20
• [ ] a = 30 b = 0
• [ ] a = 10 b = 30
• [ ] a = 0 b = 30
• [ ] a = 10 b = 20
• [ ] a = 20 b = 10

So people throw out a whole lot of explanations for this in comments and inevitably devolves into “teachers suck” because everyone on the internet is such a fucking precious snowflake, but I’m not going to get sidetracked by that, because then I’ll just get depressed and never get to the point.

Which is: the reason this information confuses people is that they think that variable assignment is confusing because it’s a mathematical abstraction, but this isn’t true. Variable assignment, and a number of similar concepts that you need to wrap your head around in programming are confusing because they are linguistic abstractions, and linguistic prejudices are confusing and difficult to override (or, as is apparent here, even identify) because they develop than people tend to think they would, and so much work goes into preserving them. Understanding computers requires one to assume intuitively (although not consciously) that meaning is pretty arbitrary, which is arguably the single most important step to understanding (again, often in a pre/non/sub-conscious way) how to interact with the rules whereby meaning is generated.

As an input text, I used the last two paragraphs here, because I thought it would be funny, and a little meta. After all this explanation, this will probably be a little disappointing, but the point is I got this:

and I thought it was totally hilarious.

Speaking of loathsome, the previously observed race to the bottom of the Facebook-UI-emulation barrel continues apace with Gmail and WordPress’ control panel being the latest things that I use to become completely fucking horrible. It’s enough to make me hope that rich fucks do in the global economy completely so I’ll be too poor to see it get any worse.

From this BBC story, marketing jagoff Gregory Roekens:

But in terms of style, it was underwhelming. People were expecting iPhone 5, but instead it’s almost fixing the weaknesses the previous phones had.

I’m glad that we can all agree that the way forward for tech companies is to follow the worst possible practices in order to impress morons and marketers. Also, Siri is. . . a pretty crazy new feature, and if you’re pshing it because you want a fancier case, you’re a fucking idiot (again.)

Leaving the whole content issue aside, the “wall” format that FB copped off of Twitter a few years ago is hell on conversations. The stream of detritus that it represents encourages only the briefest and more cursory interactions, and furthermore encourages monitoring to such an extent that taking time out to string more than a glib aside together prevents its use as intended. Topics are not to be stepped into, they are to be waved at as they go by.

I think that there’s a real false sense here that seeing everything go by constitutes a grasp on the world. The fact that the internet has made everyone a bogoexpert on every subject in existence has been fairly widely noted, and this sort of info-consolidation encourages that no end. Nobody bothers to remember that actually knowing about a particular thing and using it as a lens is the best option a human being has available for real comprehension.