Cactus

Incompetent fuckwits

2 June 2008 (language math programming) (3 comments)

Seriously.

I've read someone on Reddit, commenting on the original article:

To me at least, the equations are extremely intimidating - all the greek letters and symbols and so on.

Intimidating. Intimidating. What the fuck?! But the best one's got to be this gem:

I am aware these are not especially difficult formulas, as far as math goes... and in a long forgotten past I probably learned how to read them. Still, they're too obfuscated for my tastes.

How can you forget stuff like the meaning of Σ or Π as accumulators? It's not some esoteric notation you use once in some obscure college course and never again. This is what you use, in a CS course, every damn day, at least while you're still in college.

I'm not one to rant about random shit like that. Ignorant people are everywhere. But to be so proud of it — this is truly baffling.


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Bill 2008-06-02 20:29:50

You're not alone.

The Dude (yay, this is a blog) 2008-06-10 19:52:56

I have to agree completely with you I'm shocked as to how many people don't use mathamatical formulas to build gui's and write sql queries... I mean who hasn't worked to create an effective weather simulation algorithm in their intro to pompous asshat blog computer code tard....

cactus 2008-06-13 13:54:20

Picking SQL queries as an example might not have been your best choice: hopefully you're writing SQL queries with a solid background in relational algebra and the various variants of relational calculus.

But anyway, my point wasn't that you should use mathematical notation at every possibility. My point was that being proud of your ignorance, especially when you're a programmer and are ignorant of mathematical notations, makes you the titular incompetent fuckwit.