What real life bad habits has programming given you? | Hacker News Reader

What real life bad habits has programming given you?

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Most of the answers are exactly what I think is wrong with nerd/programming culture. Mostly it's people making dumb jokes, thinking they are clever and trying to pass it off as reality.

Answers like "I wish I could query a bar for the women with big boobs lol" just get under my skin.

That said, there are some good, honest answers in there. Counting from zero, thinking 256 is a round number, etc. are all habits carried from programming into the "real world" although I wouldn't call any of those bad.

The only one I saw that I would consider a bad habit is the guy who gets frustrated when people don't give him enough details during a conversation.

I didn't think it was all that bad, or at least I didn't read that far.

Calling text a "string" is one I am constantly trying to explain to my wife. "You know, some text, a string?" "No...?"

I think the problem I have with it is that a lot of it is about trying to out-geek other geeks. Like when someone says, "Oh yeah, well I'm so nerdy I dream about code!"

I used to do that only once or twice (as far as I remember), and that was when first really learning Scheme and wrapping my head around functional programming.

But I am guilty of coming into office barefooted just to outgeek.

Last night I had a dream that I was telling a coworker he should use reinterpret_cast for something. But I'm not going to go bragging about it and I think it may be the only time I have ever actually dreamed about coding.

Funny you should mention that. Years ago, when I was learning Lisp, I dreamed one night that the whole world had turned into parentheses, producing an existential horror rather like the "Knife Eye Attack":

http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/11p26

And the background music was Pink Floyd's "Any Colour You Like". This dream had background music. When I woke up, I was a lot better at Lisp than I was the day before, and the parens didn't bother me anymore. Nothing at all similar has happened since.

I actually do literally dream in code from time to time, but the code makes no sense, its more like a vague memory of me editing code rather than a meaningful program. I usually wake up with a smile on my face after such a dream.

I learned that people tend to understand better if you say "a string of characters". It still confuses people, but less so. I did this when explaining strings to intro-to-programming students; they don't get things right away, so it helps to include some redundancy in your words.

Actually, that's not a bad lesson for communicating in general.

I'm always amused when I catch myself preferring 16, 32, 64, etc. over any other numbers. The binary system really caught me there.

If I understand what you say correctly, you don't like when geeks act out the geek stereotype. I feel the same way. We like computers, but that shouldn't stop us from having a nice conversation, being funny and attractive to others (intellectually and otherwise).

256 IS a round number, how do you write it in binary? 100000000, that looks like a round number to me!

Using Hungarian notation for naming my kids.

Is Boy George your son?

This reminds me of the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, a five level scale where you go from novice to expert.

The expert is completely engulfed in the knowledge she has acquired and has become one with it. She sees and thinks everything colored by her expertise.

I've been using/learning Emacs for a while now, which I think has made me more sensitive to certain text formatting errors. Now, when I help my spouse proof-read her academic papers, I get really hung up on things like extra/missing spaces or tabs, mis-matched parentheses, and mis-matched quotation marks, much to my spouse's amusement (and sometimes consternation).

I throw exceptions.

At people.

Whenever a non-technical person asks a computer related question, like: "Is it possible to do X?", I have to force myself to give a short answer, without going into details, in a way that it will fit that person's needs and abilities.

I have to concentrate and run some scenarios (real time) while we are talking about what that person is capable of, so that I can give them useful information, without confusing them. Not really a bad habit (I think), nor is it frustrating, but it definitely comes from my technical background, and it takes some brain power.

During a dialogue, trying to run the sentences of another person through some kind of mental compiler and tell them about every error/illogical statement they have made.

Seriously, dont start doing that. I makes you look like a smartass. My experience is, a lot of business people say stupid things with a purpose just to move on, even if it is totally illogical, but it is their initiative that helps them to get out of an otherwise difficult situation.

Actually, here's one that is somewhat of a detriment - when making plans or giving instructions, I leave out any information that wouldn't affect what they need to do/choose, whereas people usually expect a "complete" description so they can build an image in their head. "Why would you want to know that? It won't affect your decision either way."

- determining the optimal route to drive somewhere based on historical data from my own previous trips, including traffic patterns and time of day

- using concurrent processing by shaving in the shower with a combo shampoo/conditioner in my hair while coffee is brewing

- visualizing grocery items in their rows and columns as I traverse the supermarket database

- giving the minimal required data to others to avoid unnecessary replication and its associated maintenance - "The address is 123 Main St., google it for directions."

- referring to all nouns as objects, all adjectives as properties, and all verbs as methods without giving it a second thought - "domain:bar - chick.bluedress.checkOut()"

- never wanting to do the anything twice (I just bathed yesterday; why don't I just write a function to do it every day.)

- never going anywhere new, always returning to where I came from, but with an error condition

- using the simplex method to minimize the sum of walking time plus driving time when selecting a parking spot at Walmart

I'd be able to relate to this better if it was "What real life good habits has programming given you?" One of my favorites is thinking about what is possible in similar terms to what is computable.

I find myself categorizing people into 10 types.

And I have to actively not slouch in front of computers.

There was an article on hacker news recently about a study that found slouching is actually better for the back than sitting upright.

Thanks, I missed that one when it was posted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1345938

I have wanted to try to compile a paper I was writing to see if my logic made sense.

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