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Comment by JimSangwine | Hacker News Reader

I'll be interested to hear comments from fellow hackers. Reactions from colleagues have been... varied. Jim Sangwine

It’s meaningful to him and that’s what matters. At no time did he say his goal was to impress us with his coding wizardry, so it’s irrelevant whether I think it’s clever, pedestrian, elegant, or tortured.

Its stated purpose is to motivate him and remind him of what is important to his own happiness. Given this clearly stated requirement, the code as presented, and his statement that it is motivating him, I give declare that this code works as designed.

It seems you did not realize that you are replying to the tattoo's owner.

However, your point stands if I mentally modify some pronouns and expresses my own sentiments as well. Tattoos, piercings, hair coloring, makeup, clothing are often for ourselves, not for being pretentious.

I didn’t, and quite possibly that’s for the best. I’d like to think that I’d have said exactly the same thing to Jim if I’d known he was the “canvas,” but as it turns out I know this is absolutely positively what I thought without attempting to apply tact :-)

Tattoos, piercings, hair coloring, makeup, clothing are often for ourselves, not for being pretentious.

And yet he posts it on the web, and specifically asks for other people's opinions.

In my experience people who very much care what others think of them, often claim not care what others think of them.

Maybe there are people who are interested in positive observations and constructive feedback from others, but don't care if others don't like them and choose to ignore non-constructive criticism.

Exactly. I can ask for opinions without seeking approval or being showy.

Thanks : )

I'm a JS developer too, I decided to read the code before reading the explanation. I said to myself "where the feck does 'i' come from? I guess it must be coming from outside somewhere". Smiled when I read your description:

> The variable i represents input from other people

Very cool :)

But, um, no syntax highlighting?

I considered it, but I was afraid people might think I was geeky.

nice ;)

I was once going to get this tattooed:

<?=phpinfo(); ?>

I still think about getting a code tattoo from time to time. I'm not really a PHP developer any more though.

I like the meta meaning of yours, it's timeless. Even if the JS syntax changes or you move into Obj-C or whatever, it still has the deeper meaning you've attached to it. I think that will make it age well.

I wanted to raise two points about your explanation: First, while the function j is a closure, the anonymous function is not; it is simply a higher-order function. Second, i is indeed undefined, but this will not cause a reference error, it will simply push undefined into the array. That's all :)

And you still have space for the y combinator tattoo!

- http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2008/02/17/y-combinat...

- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=58027

Ha, cool! I'd not seen that one

What about an RSA tattoo?

http://www.geekytattoos.com/illegal-tattoos-rsa-tattoos/

You completely won me over with the philosophy behind it. This should be personally meaningful to you for a long time.

I recommend practicing a concise 10 sec explanation because people WILL ask what it means.

I think one of the benefits is that I can change the meaning depending on who I am talking to. "Why honey, it means I love you of course!" ;P

I think it's pretty great. As a tattooed hacker, I'm glad that someone else wanted a code related tattoo. I've had the idea for a while, but like yourself, when I googled for others and inspiration, came up with very little.

My current plan is to get a portrait of Ada Lovelace. To me, she represents the general concept of "programmer" without being tied to a particular technology.

> The k array represents knowledge or experience.

Perhaps you might wish to name your variables? The tattoo will be read more often than it is written.

Personally, I like to name anonymous functions (function foo () {}) so when a stack trace occurs, you know where. For example, if you get a second tattoo in future!

I'm not a fan of words in tattoos, so I could never get behind a code tattoo—

But I really like how it uses the interpretation of code as a flow of information. It's how I think about programs, it's both fundamental and often misunderstood, and it makes for a great story.

In order to make any great art, there's a risk of spectacular failure. There is no reliable way of achieving greatness. If it's reliable, the best it can be is merely good.

This is exactly why I'm not getting any permanent things done to my body. I wouldn't want something merely good, I would want greatness. In order to go for greatness, I would have to risk spending the rest of my life with some spectacular failure. That's a risk that I'm not willing to take, but I appreciate it when other people do.

Your tattoo? Pretty damn great.

I like the explanation. However, I gotta wonder whether the javascript syntax noise is a bug or a feature :)

Well. I love it, at least.

I do too.

Pretty cool. I was going to get a GUID tattooed to my arm :)

That's an awesome idea. You should.

An URL could be nice too. Or a QRCode ;)

I thought about that but they might expire :(

A GUID is guaranteed unique forever pretty much :)

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