21 Nov
2011
21 Nov
'11
4:23 p.m.
On 21 Nov 2011 at 15:23, Vincent Slyngstad wrote:
This kind of thing is actually a peeve of mine. I
have nothing
against learning a little German, find quipus mildly interesting, etc.
But there is a time and place for such stuff, and it's *not* in the
middle of trying to understand and debug someone else's code! This
kind of stuff just comes off as a snotty "I know more than you do".
(I'm not sure I have any use at all for guru beads.)
Guru beads are, if memory serves, the perfect example of a ring of
linked buffers. They're used as an aid for meditation or in counting
aid when chanting (surely you remember Arthur C. Clarke's "The 9
Billion Names of God"--a 1950s SF story involving computers and
religion.) Unlike a rosary, they have no beginning or end--you just
keep reusing the beads. A similar idea is in the "Towers of Hanoi"
story used by the authors of the SNOBOL4 book to illustrate
recursion.
You also have to understand that the GB example was written in the
70's by an ex-IBMer who lived with a band of gypsies in the Santa
Cruz mountains. He'd come down to the valley to grab some work when
his woman spent all of his money. He played a mean gypsy guitar and
was vicious at p?tanque. West coast computing was far more colorful
back then.
Personally, I enjoy reading things that try to educate me--it keeps
me from getting bored and piques my curiosity. But if you're not
curious by nature, I can see where it might be tiresome.
Coding is more than writing instructions--it's about communication.
Some people will dedicate many lines of commentary explaining how a
particularly complex piece of code operates, using any literary
device to aid in understanding. I admire those who put in enough
thought to take the time to write such stuff.
--Chuck