this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who didn't realise this joke is in base 3.

[–] aaiding 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Actually, there's 2 more:

  1. People making off-by-one errors
[–] zurohki@lemmy.fmhy.ml 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IIRC the two hardest problems in computer science are cache invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors.

[–] aaiding 3 points 2 years ago

Pretty sure that's the one

Wikipedia called these fencepost errors at one point (they now just say it is the specific type of off-by-one error in which you miscount the posts (vertices) or panels (arcs) in a fence (graph) by using one to count the other). I read this before my first programming class and then mentioned the term to my professor. She had no idea what I was talking about 😅

[–] hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org 37 points 2 years ago (4 children)

That's kind of a confusing way to explain binary

[–] drew_belloc@programming.dev 6 points 2 years ago

That's kinda how my college explained

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Common core binary lol

[–] BestBouclettes@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Absolutely, it's much easier to understand with a binary table

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

IMO it should've been an analogy with 9 in base 10, it would've been clearer.

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah when I'm teaching new networking guys how binary and hex works I always reference the changeover from 9- the next place (tens, hundreds, thousands) to conceptualize the idea that we count the way we do only because of base ten.

In order to teach alternate forms of counting you have to first break someone out of the idea that base ten is "how it's done" which is difficult because we never mention in education prior to college or trade schools that you can count with literally any number of symbols if you wanted to.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yep, I think the problem with most folks is that base 10 is taken for granted without fully understanding it. Maybe some of the concepts would be even easier to explain in hex instead of in binary - that you count to F instead of to 9 before flipping to 10, then explaining that binary follows the same principle, but only has two digits, hence has to flip to 10 sooner.

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Honestly explaining base 15 first is probably the way to go, once you add symbols you can be like "ok now binary works the same way we just have to limit ourselves to two characters."

[–] AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Binary is not very pc. Everyone knows there are infinite numbers

[–] Little8Lost@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] meekah@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Some weird joke about political correctness and genders I think

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 years ago

...there's still infinite numbers in binary?

[–] Port8080@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

I think he got it