Official "Donald Knuth" Discussion

[Shoofle]

As Feynman was so fond of saying, "Hi! What's your name?"

[beinsane]

Of a list of "proof methods" that made the rounds a while ago, my favorite was proof by authority: "It's true because Don Knuth says so."

(The runner-up was proof by intimidation, which I wish I were scary-looking enough to pull off.)

[leebenningfield]

"there 1 type of person in the world. 1) those who start their arrays with index 1; 1) those who star their arrays with index 0"

i may have misquoted that, but i'm sure you get the general idea...

[EM-002.rv-L "Tem Cu]

If you don't have one already, get a T-shirt... http://geekz.co.uk/shop/

And even though this is completely unrelated: if you haven't already for some reason... http://geekz.co.uk/schneierfacts/facts/top

[TheReverend]

5 years of college and I never heard his name. Oh well, if there is ever a GOF comic, I'll be like "OHHH, I know that reference."

I'll just wait patiently.

[rrenaud]

Has anyone here successfully read through "The Art of Computer Programming?" It's rough reading for me.

[abcde]

I like it how we can tell which way the people are facing, even though they don't have any faces. That's super-duper-crafted stick figuring.

[kira]

I like it how we can tell which way the people are facing, even though they don't have any faces. That's super-duper-crafted stick figuring.

After reading this, I went back and looked closely at the comic. It's totally true. You can tell which way the people are facing AND the subtle posture shift is just... fantastic.

*stamps Randy's comic with my "Good work!" stamp.*

[Marrow]

"there 1 type of person in the world. 1) those who start their arrays with index 1; 1) those who star their arrays with index 0"

i may have misquoted that, but i'm sure you get the general idea...

I am suddenly perpetually currious if it should be "there is one type", or "there are one type" I think IS just in case anyone thinks I don't have a guess

As for anything else that is going on I am totally clueless.

[wisnij]

"there 1 type of person in the world. 1) those who start their arrays with index 1; 1) those who star their arrays with index 0"

This sentence no verb?

I am suddenly perpetually currious if it should be "there is one type", or "there are one type" I think IS just in case anyone thinks I don't have a guess

Yeah, it's "is".

Marrow, are you a native speaker of English? (I don't mean that in an insulting way, I'm genuinely curious.)

[majr]

Binary 1 is plural so it's 'are'.

[Factitious]

Binary 1 is the same number as decimal 1.

[MrBawn]

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

When you say it out loud to other people, it's fun to say "ten".

[wisnij]

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

Originally there were 11 kinds, the other being "people who haven't heard this %#$! joke yet". The cardinality of that set has since dropped to zero.

[nhoj]

I worked on a project that had some fortran components to process data feed to it via a java app. Switching indexing regularly lead to some interesting bugs but there was free beer.

[Jerf]

Switching indexing? You didn't just let the 0'th element of the Java array sit empty and ignore it? It's only one reference's worth of memory, well worth it to keep the indices in sync, and you pretty much only have to worry it on import and export. (And either write your loops to start at 1 in Java or write them to accept a NullPointer in the first slot without crashing.)

The only time that would be annoying would be if you were constantly sticking arrays together in Java, and even then, one "arrayGlue" method(/FUNCTION, stupid Java designers) would have handled that.

[Charodei]

Is/are isn't an issue in Russian - the word ???? affirms existence of both singular and plural. Zero isn't plural - it's always phrased in the negative, being a lack of something, which is more intuitive. In English, I'd use "There are 2 types of person...", as the number of groups is cardinality, which is unambiguously two in this case. Array indices are ordinality; zeroth, first, second, etc. are designators, neither singular nor plural.

[sketerpot]

You know, we need to shake things up a little in the now-stagnant world of number representation jokes. My contribution:

There are 00100000 types of people in the world: those who understand 8-bit little-endian one-hot binary encoding, those who don't, and people who understand why I had to include a third group of people to differentiate this from ordinary binary.

[phlip]

There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think this joke is ridiculous, and not funny.

There are also 2 types of people in the world: Those who use inside jokes from one community in another, and those that hate me for it.

[xkcd]

There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who think this joke is ridiculous, and not funny.

There are also 2 types of people in the world: Those who use inside jokes from one community in another, and those that hate me for it.

I once tried to collect all the variations on that joke I had heard. It's somewhere here in my giant notepad file of miscellaneous text, lemme find it:

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand telepathy and.
There is one kind of person in the world.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who separate people into two kinds and those who don't.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who have friends. (From Toothpaste for Dinner)
There are two kinds of people in the world: (1) who start their arrays from 1, and (1) those who start their arrays from 0 (From bash.org recently)
There are ten kinds of people in this world: people who understand binary, people who don't, african-americans, caucasians, asians, americans, europeans, introverts, extroverts... Hold on, there's lots more than ten kinds of people.

I think the Toothpaste for Dinner one is my favorite, but the problem is that when you try to tell it, people jump in and finish it for you when you say the first half, and that should add to the irony but really it just takes the wind out of the punchline. Same thing happens with another of my favorite Toothpastes, with the crazy Robarb guy talking -- "How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb? None, 'cause they're all cut up in barrels in my basement."

[Grincement]

Haha I like the telepathy one...not heard it before.

Following the trend of jokes, the emo one remided me of this:

How many male chauvinistic (sp!?) pigs does it take to change a light bulb? None, the bitch can cook in the dark.

[Marlayna]

My all-time fav:

- How many surrealists does it take to change a light-bulb?
- Pink crocodile sandwich.

[phlip]

There are 2 types of jokes in the world: those with a punchline and those without.

[umbrae]

There are 2 types of jokes in the world: those with a punchline and those without.

This best mindfuck about this joke is that it can be seen as both options.

It's kinda like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It can doesn't really have a punchline until you've read it and understood that it has no punchline, which is in fact a punchline. So you change the outcome by reading it.

[Penguin]

There are two kinds of people in the world: (1) who start their arrays from 1, and (1) those who start their arrays from 0.

I'd heard most of the others before, but this one really amused me. I think I had to read it twice to understand it, and then couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes. Well-played.

[Tropylium]

My all-time fav:

- How many surrealists does it take to change a light-bulb?
- Pink crocodile sandwich.

I still like the mailing list (/forum, Usenet group, take your pick) spin the best.

Oh yeah, and wasn't the joke here pretty much the same as in A Way So Familiar? Doesn't seem to bother anyone else than me.

[davean]

My all-time fav:

- How many surrealists does it take to change a light-bulb?
- Pink crocodile sandwich.

I still like the mailing list (/forum, Usenet group, take your pick) spin the best.

Oh yeah, and wasn't the joke here pretty much the same as in A Way So Familiar? Doesn't seem to bother anyone else than me.

Same class of jokes. Different joke, different perspective, different a lot of things. There are quite a few of any type of joke.

[Cynic]

Schrodingers cat-litter box.

Unless you observe it, you never have to change it.

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

this is one of my favorite comics...
I have always wanted to use a quote from somebody that has nothing to do with the current argument....

i.e.
"Everyone knows macs are better than P.C.'s... I mean even Bill Gates said 'Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.' "

[Logodaedalus]

-What do you get when you cross an insomniac and an amnesic?

-Someone who stays up all night trying to remember the punchline

[Logodaedalus]

-What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic and someone with ADD?

[hendusoone]

To jump on the bandwagon:

There are two types of people in the world - those who can infer from incomplete data

[LegosDrgn]

I realized a long time ago how old the "Binary People" joke was getting, so I made my own little bastard-child from it.

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand trinary, those who don't, and those that are going to confuse this with that other damn joke.

[OfficiallyHaphazard]

"There are two types of people in this worl--"
"Omg, i hate these jokes... but fine tell me anyways"
"Ok... So there are two types of people in the world: " *dramatic pause* "males and females."
...
...
...
...
...
"Umm, thats your joke???"
"Yep" *:D*
...
*SLAP*

[bbctol]

There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who understand trinary, and those who understand both and are reading this through to the end just to see if there are three or four types.

Yeah, I know, not funny.

How many lightbulbs does it take to screw in a dyslexic?

[hendusoone]

There are 11 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, those who understand trinary, and those who understand both and are reading this through to the end just to see if there are three or four types.

Yeah, I know, not funny.

How many lightbulbs does it take to screw in a dyslexic?

That depends on whether or not you like to have dark in the sex.

Please don't kill me for that... I know it was bad, but couldn't resist.

EDIT: OMG, I totally missed the "in" my first time reading that

[thoughtfully]

Has anyone here successfully read through "The Art of Computer Programming?" It's rough reading for me.

You should try the TeX source.

<ducks>