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random bits
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by bit rot. I've been at my current employer for several years, and our code base is Java (and now a little bit of C#). Today we interviewed a candidate whose background is primarily C with some C++. I was about to write the programming problem on the whiteboard, translated from Java to a language he'd be more comfortable in... and had forgotten too much syntax. Oops! I used to be proficient in both. I still know C++ well enough to work in (on existing code), and of course can still speak to it on a conceptual level, but I no longer know it well enough to generate from scratch. Bummer. I guess when you install Java you get garbage collection. :-)
(Just checked; still have rudimentary LISP. Good.)
Speaking of bit rot, from the "yes we really talk like this" department:
While discussing the too-old bread that was being disposed of:
Dani: Bread makes its greatest contribution to the ecology in the third week.
Me: No, bread makes its greatest contribution to medicine in the third week. It makes its contribution to ecology in the sixth week.
(In my defense, he bought the bread while I was out of town and it sat there neglected all this time.)
Speaking of food, yesterday was the last day at work for one of our more technical technical writers (not in my group), one of the primary implementors of our current XML-based system (DocBook-based). Another coworker got a cake, inscribed as follows: <colophon><para>We'll miss you Bill</para></colophon>. She did it herself; I can only imagine the things that could have gone wrong if phoning that in to the bakery. It went over well.
(Just checked; still have rudimentary LISP. Good.)
Speaking of bit rot, from the "yes we really talk like this" department:
While discussing the too-old bread that was being disposed of:
Dani: Bread makes its greatest contribution to the ecology in the third week.
Me: No, bread makes its greatest contribution to medicine in the third week. It makes its contribution to ecology in the sixth week.
(In my defense, he bought the bread while I was out of town and it sat there neglected all this time.)
Speaking of food, yesterday was the last day at work for one of our more technical technical writers (not in my group), one of the primary implementors of our current XML-based system (DocBook-based). Another coworker got a cake, inscribed as follows: <colophon><para>We'll miss you Bill</para></colophon>. She did it herself; I can only imagine the things that could have gone wrong if phoning that in to the bakery. It went over well.
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