Dmitry Medvedev declares official holiday in Russia: Programmer's Day | Hacker News Reader

Dmitry Medvedev declares official holiday in Russia: Programmer's Day

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80 pointsmartincmartin34 comments

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Medvedev's office:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2453/3714584029_6d37f5a64e_o....

Oval Office:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/21/us/21obama5-6...

Medvedev has 2 mice?

And 2 keyboards and 2 monitors.

I still don't see the 4 arms thou...

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/02/the-workstations-of-...

Maybe these people will answer your stupid question..

Discussion I saw said it's two computers: one for public internet one for the high-security gov network (with no physical connection). Apparently that's the norm for very-high-security government setups.

of course - 2nd for SS-18 targeting U.S. :)

Medvedev has been witnessed using macbooks and is internet savvy guy.

Most of the people I know who use macbooks can't tell an ethernet cable from a shoe string, let alone a bit from a byte. :-)

Disclaimer: Mac/Linux user here. And my main machine is a macbook (actually a MBP).

You could easily replace "MacBooks" with "Windows" in that sentence and it would still be true.

You could replace 'MacBooks/Windows' with 'computers' in that sentence and it would still be true.

True.

That's why I thought the comment I replied to was kind of pointless.

You couldn't be more wrong guys :) A lot of IT professionals and noobies in Russia dream of MacBook. The different question is that the apple products are much more expensive here rather than overseas.

Almost everybody tries to bring it from USA, via eBay or somebody.

It's kind of different in Russia: you have to know about Apple, Macs are harder to find (only recently Apple Russia began installing tiny Mac booths in large computer stores), there are no ads (except for iPhones), iPods are not popular. 99.9% of people don't know about Apple.

With macs you don't need to know the difference between a standard ethernet cable and a crossover cable, but I don't think they've extended the web as far as shoe strings yet.

I am so not impressed when politicians and government start doing something meaninglessly nice to any of the industries, because this is so full of shit. Like who cares about programmer's day? Do you? A best any programmer can do to please himself professionally is to write a great piece of code.

Unfortunately, these sort of things are used by politicians all over the world to make an illusion that they care and are doing something when in reality they do not. And unfortunately some smart people also buy it.

I would rather they do something like this than start creating all sorts of subsidies to particular industries (or even worse, particular 'industry leaders').

I don't see any connection between these two things. They may as well do both at the same time. The difference is that making someone's day is meaningless and useless to those this day has been made for.

hey if secretaries get their own day, why not programmers?

Yeah, and why not anyone else? You'll soon be out of days in year if you're going to give them away that easily. So make sure you only give one to those, who have not voted for you already.

Almost everyone else does have their holiday in Russia. It is an old Soviet tradition to celebrate every kind of work.

Still don't see what's wrong with it - it's not a public holiday, but it still a chance for people to see that their field of work is valuable for country. So - why not?

Seems to me, the only people who benefit from these "days" are the greeting card companies.

Programmers day greeting card, anyone?

Ah common, what's wrong with the fact that Mr Medvedev actually points out that this industry is important for the country?! You can easily replace Medvedev with, say, Her Majesty (and Russia with the UK) and the idea remains the same.

"In Soviet Russia, Programmer's day is a holiday"

Keep in mind that it's not a day off, just a holiday as in "notable calendar date".

Do we all get the day off?

You should. It's Saturday.

Caturday? Then why does my clocks show it's Sunday?!

"The number 256 is chosen because it is the number of integers that can be expressed using a single eight-byte"

is the translation off or is this really what they said?

The translation is a bit off - the original text is correct. But these are not Medvedev's actual words anyway.

Original says "eight-bit byte".

Translation sucks. It literally says that "this is a number of integers which can be represented by one eight-bit byte" although it doesn't sound as stupid in Russian (but it still does).

Hacker Day would've been better.

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