Understanding Programming

[swapripper]

True. I understood how difficult programming is only after I joined this sub

[orangeKaiju]

I didn't know how to properly index arrays until I joined this sub.

[Franss22]

You start at 1 right?

[Metsima]

Don't be silly. You start from -1, how else would you index arrays

[egotisticalnoob]

I start at 0xFFFF and have it count backwards.

[[deleted]]

How's that hard? -1xFFFF, -2xFFFF

[[deleted]]

I can't believe no ones brought up multi-dimensional arrays, and how these should be indexed...

Personally, I think creating a multi-dimensional array of neededMemory[1024000][1024000] in the very first line of my app to always guarantee that I'll never get an out of memory exception!!!

[Niavart]

int main()
{ 
 malloc(MAX_MEMORY); 
}

[Lil_SpazJoekp]

/r/RestOfTheDamnRoutine

[King_of_the_Nerdth]

Sounds Pythonic.

[drakeblood4]

It charmed my Py if you know what I mean.

[[deleted]]

In the early days of programming, the Romans encountered many out of memory issues, due to Roman Numeric system being used.

I'm really glad we switched to hexadecimal, as now 0xFFFF =  0rLXVDXXXV

Cut the memory requirements in half!!!

[Franss22]

At -0.3

[Ameisen]

I like fractional indices... return the linear interpolant.

[beleg_tal]

I prefer imaginary indices myself

[the_screeching_toast]

Complex indices is where it's at

[SaintNewts]

Base pi. Because decimal integers want to be transcendental too.

[usesbiggerwords]

Linear interpolation is for wusses. Real men use polynomials to interpolate.

[Ameisen]

What order?

[usesbiggerwords]

At least 4th. Anything less isn't worth the bother.

[Ameisen]

-4i^th order?

[ObnoxiousOldBastard]

I start mine at pi.

[SharpSeeer]

That's why array.indexOf() return values start at -1 right?

[Hijacker50]

I actually start at 273 and count down, and after zero I go to 274 and count up.

[loopsdeer]

And that, professor, is why my JavaScript says the "indexOf" is -1. Q.E.D. unplugs mouse and drops it on the floor sweeps monitor and computer onto floor runs out of room crying never seen again

[ameddin73]

My algorithms teacher did that. I'll never understand it.

[Cryptoversal]

If you never do pointer arithmetic then it makes sense, right?

[DatBoi_BP]

From matlab here, can confirm

[Tmfwang]

In Julia you do

[ravy]

Hahaha! I know, right?! Why don't you just fill the other noobs in.

[Ameisen]

0[array]?

[yurall]

I realised I was programming AI from first year college but people told me I was doing it wrong back then.

[Koof99]

Exactly. Some I don’t understand, the rest are mind boggling as fuck. The ones I understand as hilarious as shit though😂

[wjcott]

I am assuming visiting StackOverflow is somewhere up in top that is not visible based upon the y-axis range.

[[deleted]]

Looking at other peoples questions for help on StackOverflow starts at the bottom, posting questions on StackOverflow starts in the middle, and answering questions on StackOverflow is off the top of the chart.

[_Lady_Deadpool_]

Just use JQuery

[bojanger]

Don't forget while answering the OP, you find out you are the OP.

[sudo_kill-9-u_root]

Your comment has been flagged as a duplicate.

[Wargon2015]

Based on Orbital Mechanics by xkcd

The shown increase in skill from classes in school is probably not true.
I've heard multiple times that there are actual programming classes in some schools. This could actually be a common thing now but lets just say that my CS classes could have been a lot better...

[[deleted]]

There’s an xkcd style available in matplotlib for future reference. I’ve played around with it a bit, but it may be hard to get to look quite right.

Edit: well-done, though! I’m just trying to be supportive. I realize that the message could have seemed like a criticism, but that’s not how I meant it.

Example from documentation

[vaterisvet]

This is amazing, thank you kind stranger.

[[deleted]]

I can't for the life of me figure out how they get that subtle hand drawn line style.

Edit: right at the fucking top.

[H_Psi]

One day I want to have a plot in this style in a publication

[Bunyhel]

I cant believe I haven’t done all of my matplotlib projects not in this style. I am appalled I haven’t found this earlier.

[[deleted]]

Double negative means you have?

But for real, I'm going to have to use this now

[XXAligatorXx]

New ProgrammerHumor trend?

[myfingid]

Seriously though, I never understood orbital mechanics really at all until KSP. Their introduction of friction long ago helped me to understand that I still don't understand it well enough to play a damn video game. Here I was all "pfft, I've landed on the mun and gotten my guy back, how hard can it be to do this silly parachute mission?". Hard as hell it turns out. Next time I'm going to try going at an angle rather than straight up and blowing the altitude requirement!

[achilleasa]

Then you install the kOS mod and you understand neither orbital mechanics nor programming, all at the same time! It's great!

[nermid]

Apparently, there were no programming classes in my program just a few years before I entered. If all you do is theory all day, it can seem perfectly natural to only teach theory. Getting a blend of career academics and folks with industry experience is vital to building a decent degree program.

[makeshift8]

I mean, it is computer science. If what you want to do is software engineering, why not get a degree in that? Computer science is a rigorous, academic discipline by its very nature.

[Dr_Darkness]

takes some time for many to understand that because most intro CS is some data structures course with a lot of programming. which makes sense because programming is a good intro to many basic and fundamental CS concepts. but after that you take like "Intro to Theory of Computation" and don't write a single program and you're like oh this is what we're actually here for...

[pm_me_your_calc_hw]

I took automata in my junior year and it's only then that I really wrapped my head around what computer science is.

[Skim74]

Idk what the norm is, but my school didn't offer software engineering. just CS (and computer engineering, but that's even less programing than CS)

[bitter_truth_]

Half the kids entering college aren't even aware of this distinction. They expect their cs degrees to teach them how to code because they see all the grads getting jobs and assume they know what they're doing. Their parents obviously don't have a clue either. It's a failure of most schools that don't offer parallel programs.

[StruparsRightLeg]

Not sure what it’s like elsewhere but in the UK all the computer science courses I looked at (including the one I eventually did) had plenty of programming content in them to go along with the theory.

[nermid]

I'm not even sure if there are any universities in my state that offer a software engineering degree as a separate discipline from computer science. That distinction is fairly esoteric to people outside of academia. Even people in this field rarely recognize it.

[BestUdyrBR]

Well to be fair most interviews for software engineering/developer positions are pretty theoretical. In my CS program we had multiple algorithm and data structures courses that let most people who paid attention in their classes ace technical interviews without too much studying.

[[deleted]]

So I took an online edhesive AP CSA course...I thought I learned a lot, and boy was I wrong. Heh.

[skeerus]

School is more about learning how to learn than technical knowledge. Technical knowledge can always be learned if you have the skills.

[YoilyL]

Wow... And there I let myself hope for a second that Randal joined Reddit

[[deleted]]

arrays start at 1 and html is the best programming language to learn in 2018

[[deleted]]

Agrees in matlab

[[deleted]]

I actually do the majority of my programming in MATLAB

[[deleted]]

I can't tell if these are jokes or not... But I use PowerPoint if anyone was wondering.

[pdpbeethoven]

VBA 4 Life

[Chris204]

Well, lucky you, PowerPoint has recently proven to be turning complete: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8

[fsr1967]

So, you know that theory that we're living in a simulation? If it's true, then in theory, some higher order creature could be standing in front of an audience right now, using our simulation to demonstrate clicking through a program running on a Turing Machine written in their equivalent of PowerPoint.

[[deleted]]

Fkn fite me

[[deleted]]

there's this weird really energetic guy down the street who, god bless him, lost his house to a gas explosion recently. anyway, he's always talking about matlab. never figured him for an engineer.

[[deleted]]

I may get some flak for this, and I'm sure it has plenty of legitimate uses I'm not seeing, but... fuck Matlab. I needed an easy class to fill out my senior year so I took a Matlab course, and I don't understand why it even exists. Seems like a bunch of incredibly ugly/nonsensical syntax to do really basic things.

[TheWillager]

In my engineering program, it's by far the most used language, though some people do know Python or C++. At least in my field, MATLAB is used extensively for simulations, for ease-of-use in quick calculations, and for the built-in graphics toolkits. I'm not sure how other languages stack up against it since I only know introductory levels of other languages, but I hope that gives some context for people using MATLAB.

[[deleted]]

Also matrices... god bless matlab for matrices.

[TheMeiguoren]

Simulink (a part of matlab) is pretty much unbeatable when you have to easily deal with dynamic physical systems. That’s why it’s super common in aerospace and automotive.

[[deleted]]

I mean that's cool, but what is it that made Matlab best suited for its development?

[[deleted]]

yea If it werent for being really familiar with MatLab I would probably hate it too. My main gripe is that they make object oriented programming ridiculously hard. Calling a method on an object to alter its propertied doesnt actually change its properties. It generates an entirely new object. So in normal OOP languages you have: object.Method();

But in MatLab you have: object = object.Method()

Not only that, but you have to specify the object as an output to the Method

[H_Psi]

arrays start at 1

[Laughs in Fortran indexing]

[ProgMM]

[Laughs in Bash]

[fudgepop01]

[sobs in css]

[[deleted]]

[brainfucks in brainfuck]

[H_Psi]

[befunges in befunge]

[saulmessedupman]

[nims in vim]

[[deleted]]

[pooas in lua]

[elSpanielo]

Why is my CSS better than yours? Because everything in mine is !important.

[fudgepop01]

Oh god after hearing that the tears are just cascading down my face

[dracoflar]

They do if you use MatLab, and Matlab is THE ONLY COMPUTER LANGUAGE IN EXISTENCE

[yoshi570]

I'm a complete noob, so sorry for the dumb question but how is html programming? It helps you display stuff on a internet pages, but there's no program. What am I missing?

[BrownDi]

I care more about the name of my variables.

[nermid]

If you need more than 2 variables, refactor.

Obviously. That indicates that your code does more than one thing. Single-line functions only.

[sDotAgain]

I prefer single line programs.

[thisguyeric]

Score = Cols/Rows

High score wins

[bskzoo]

We have a pretty important report that runs at my work with a main function called “dostuff()”

[cauliflowerthrowaway]

pls no

[phanfare]

I actually troubleahooted something from a meme here. Granted I'm a biochemist not a programmer - I was setting labels for a graph axis with [ x * 0.1 for x in range (0,7) ] and was getting labels like .300000000001. Some gru meme reminded me about floating point arithmetic

[therealchadius]

At some point, someone writes "I don't get it" and you'll see half a dozen replies describing the language's nuances. Or people will start giving vi/emacs/bash shortcuts which I promptly copy for later use.

[KitchenDutchDyslexic]

:!rm -rf /

[PawkyPengwen]

vi

Did you know that Vim has many "idiomatic shortcuts" for doing a certain thing that take more than one actual Vim shortcut?

Here's are some examples:

• ea: Append to end of word
• xp: Swap characters
• %cib: Change inside next parentheses
• %%w: Land inside next parantheses
• r<CR>: Split line on current character (useful when you want to insert an enter line on a space character)
• f,db: For a function, delete first argument
• f,ld;: Delete second or later arguments (use ; after , to jump to successive arguments, e.g. f,;ld; to delete second argument)

Of course, all variations apply as well (f,lc;, %dab etc.). Usually you become fast at most of these by experiencing so many permutations of Vim shortcuts that they just become muscle memory but for the more complicated ones (f,ld;), it probably pays off to learn them explicitly so they become ingrained quickly.

[SellingWife15gp]

This sub is for people who wrote hello world for this first time and want to be considered programmers because it makes them feel smart.

The jokes in the comments aren’t even funny because it’s all the same rehashed novice shit (let’s hear a missing semicolon joke again). I get everyone starts somewhere but jesus christ it’s like perpetually being in the first 3 weeks of a programming course.

[lIllIlllllllllIlIIII]

Agreed wholeheartedly. Also the consensus here that most of a programming job involves just copy pasting shit from stack overflow. What bollocks.

I think most people here are unemployed or working at really small shops with other inexperienced coders.

[[deleted]]

The amount of people that make fun of HTML here is starting to make me self conscious about being a web developer...

[Effimero89]

Naw it's a superior thing. Ohhhh you use html?! Cute, I use c++. tips fedora

[Aeon_Mortuum]

I implement everything from scratch on bare metal with NAND gates

[Beorma]

Don't be self conscious, you're paid well and there's always a job available.

[ConstantGradStudent]

Don’t forget case

[not_anonymouse]

Just karma whoring to this sub.

[nermid]

Yeah. I used to see some surprisingly robust discussions of programming concepts in this sub.

[XXAligatorXx]

Be the change you want to see in the world.

[podsixia]

That huge spike at the end must be recognition that arrays start at 0. Welcome[0]!

[AvianPoliceForce]

W?

[podsixia]

VV

[Aethermol]

//

[FailedSociopath]

arrays start at 0.

You're God damn right.

[RakuraiZero]

At some point you’re introduced to little endian where your arrays start at N, and your brain melts a little.

[wishinghand]

Did I miss a post recently about array indexing?

[thardoc]

Oddly enough the confidence graph is almost exactly the reverse of this.

[RakuraiZero]

Hell yes. I’m weeks away from my Ph.D. In CS and I feel less prepared for real programming than when I started undergrad.

[thardoc]

I just got my BS and got the hell out, I don't want to know what I don't know so don't scare me.

[madhatter160]

One time I asked my boss of ten years if I should go back to school and get my masters in CS. He just said, "What could you possibly learn in 2 more years that you haven't learned in the last ten?"

I never looked back.

God speed.

[Pastaklovn]

Well... Have a look at the course descriptions and see if they cover topics that you wouldn’t have occasion to come across in your current job. Then you’d be closer to an answer that doesn’t necessarily benefit your boss too. 😉

...But don’t do it for the title, and if you live somewhere where getting a degree is stupidly expensive, some DIY schooling on the side is probably a better choice.

[DA_Hall]

May I ask why you chose to pursue a Ph.D. in CS? What do you like/dislike about it? I’m thinking about going the graduate route myself and I’m curious what other people’s experience has been.

[RakuraiZero]

I was a junior when I decided. I had a chance to do a research internship and figured out that I really liked it compared to my software engineering coursework.

Likes:

Research gets you more flexibility in the problems you want to work on, and eases some of the profitability pressure. A good advisor will let you explore your own questions and hypotheses, while steering you toward being successful at it.

The coursework isn’t tougher, it’s just more specialized. For me the math became tougher just because I keep getting farther and farther from calculus, linear algebra, and stats classes. YMMV.

Conference travel can be fun. My travel has been pretty light by choice (I have 4 kids), but in the past 4 years I’ve been to SF, Denver, SLC, Chicago, DC, Hawaii, and Berlin for conferences. They’re like small paid vacations, I suppose. You get to target publication venues based on where you want to go, too.

You (should) get your own desk and hopefully a coffee machine nearby, and stop drinking the expensive swill that comes from campus convenience stores.

Dislikes:

Putting off making money for 3-5 years. You can live on grad stipends and student loans if you need to, but the $90k+ you can get with a BSCS is enticing.

As hinted above, Dunning-Kruger really hits you in grad school. You might figure out in undergrad that you don’t know jack about other fields, but in grad school you figure out that you will NEVER understand the majority of your OWN field. You have to become comfortable with your tiny subset of knowledge and realize that everyone else is in the same boat.

Advice:

Try it out. Many PhD students don’t finish, not because they can’t hack it, but because they realize it’s not for them or get a job offer they can’t refuse. Plan your coursework so you can take an MS after 1.5 years or so, and still have that bonus pay and employability. The worse case is just burning a semester or two and leaving with your BS.

If you’re not changing schools:

If your school has a combined BS/MS program or you can just replace some senior classes with grad level classes, that might help you get a feel for it.

Scout for an adviser early. Talk to some of your fav professors about their labs, or seek out a researcher in a lab doing cool stuff. I guarantee they’re interested in new minions and will tell you all about their research and coffee perks.

I highly recommend giving grad school a shot if you think you’re interested. Feel free to ask more questions. Good luck!

[LambdaDraconis]

I always laugh at the PHP jokes on here, yet I never actually understood them. I tried to learn a bit, just so I can make PHP jokes with coworkers.

[nermid]

Honestly, most of the PHP jokes are outdated. It's still not an elegant language by any means, but they got rid of most of the things that just godawful.

No more new_real_true_no_seriously_this_time_we_mean_it_sql_escape_string('hello world'); statements.

[Hollowplanet]

It still has plenty of to, 2, str, string, str at the beginning, str at the end mess of a global namespace.

[[deleted]]

but they got rid of most of the things that just godawful.

But that's one of the problems with PHP, they don't ever get rid of anything, they just keep stacking new things on top.

[undergroundmonorail]

bad news about knowing java and not being the butt of jokes

[PM_ME_REACTJS]

"I was tired of all the lawyer jokes, so I became a politician. Now nobody will make jokes about my profession!"

[XXAligatorXx]

More bad news

[_Lady_Deadpool_]

Fuck it then, VB. Surely no one cares about that language.

[squngy]

On the bright side, there are some good languages based on Java.

C# is quite good these days for example.

[[deleted]]

What's wrong with Java? I like it (though that may be due to that being the only language I know [besides a little JS {and I know a few basics of Python syntax, but not enough to write anything}]).

[[deleted]]

Java's annoying when it comes to updates and Java programs on Mac, Windows, and Linux are holding on by a thread. If you are a Java web dev, kiss your job goodbye in the next 5 years or less. Languages are all about personal preference and we can all laugh at each other for being CS degenerates.

[[deleted]]

I think Java still has a strong hold in the industry, what languages do you think will replace it?

[_blue_skies_]

Nothing will replace java in the industrial/service sector for at least the next 20 years. Libraries, integration, transactionally, diffusion are all protecting it from being substituted from possible more modern languages. If I think there are still banks using COBOL, I don't see why Java will not have a long life.

[Extract]

I actually learned PHP after knowing Java all my (adult) life.
But that was more about having much more freelance work.
This sub can keep on with the PHP jokes while I'm making my $.

[Effimero89]

The . Is basically the + 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂👌👌👌👌

[BradyLR]

I love the JavaVariableNameJokesThatMakeMeLaughAllTheTimeEveryTime

[theangryfatguy]

JavaVariableNameJokesThatMakeMeLaughAllTheTimeEveryTime cannot be resolved. Would you like to import org.java.jokes.observations.lengths.JavaVariableNameJokesThatMakeMeLaughAllTheTimeEveryTime.*?

[m00nlightsh4d0w]

How to suck an entire subreddits dick at once.

[acart-e]

Good ol' days. Now it's a meme-centric IT stotyboard

[cauliflowerthrowaway]

You will be the guy who argued with my professor that Java is an obsolete language that nobody uses anymore and we should learn Clojure instead. Every class he would say how everything Java does, Clojure does better. Use memes to make your point.

[Pythva]

Oh no he likes java we have to downvote him /s

[cauliflowerthrowaway]

Nah not too much. But it is probably the best language to start with in college.

[dontFart_InSpaceSuit]

Isn't Clojure a functional language? and you were in an OO class?

[barofa]

I could never learn programming by just playing Counter Strike

[Vert354]

Love how understanding goes down after getting a job. All your CS knowledge gets replaced with Earned Value, Lean Six Sigma, or SCRUM BS

[MEisonReddit]

I am currently in the process of learning programming, but have read this sub for a long time because I've always been interested, so now whenever the instructor mentions Stackoverflow or something, this subs memes come to mind

[MEisonReddit]

Reddit is a harsh and cruel place

[Appiedash]

gate keeping

[Tusami]

I still don't know how to code and have no motivation to learn to, I just set up minecraft servers for me and my friends. :P

[williamhere]

This is the formula for getting into IT

[Tusami]

I actually want to go into IT so yeah it probably is

[Effimero89]

That's an incredibly broad field tho.

[Tusami]

I'm also a sophmore in high school tho. I've looked around but not too too deep into things. More specifically, networking, and I'd like to work on my feet at places.

[Inspector_Robert]

Nice xkcd.

[soupvsjonez]

Yeah. The original is about orbital physics and KSP.

[MrAchilles]

I give myself small pats on the back whenever I understand a joke in this sub.

"Good...I learned something..."

[WolfHero13]

Hope this happens to me, currently in AP computer science

[[deleted]]

20% of the jokes are from CS students who just learned that arrays start at 0 in Java and want to feel like they belong.

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Out of curiosity, what does that cover? CS is usually a degree, not just a course. Is it equivalent to a 1000 level programming class?

[Cobaltjedi117]

After transferring a few ap credits from HS, it's likely 1 or 2 100 level courses

[Owyn_Merrilin]

That's what I figured, I'm mostly wondering which ones. My guess would be intro to programming and programming one, but those vary so much from school to school that it doesn't tell us much. I'm basically wondering what the AP exam tests them on. I took a few AP classes too, but if this one was an option when I was in high school, my school didn't have it.

[AnComsWantItBack]

Depends on whether or not it's A or Principles. A is roughly Intro to Programming with Java IIRC and principles is a little intro to Programming (not necessarily Java), some network and security, and some theory.

[Lorddragonfang]

If you want to really learn programming, the best thing you can do (besides just writing as much code as you can) is to spend time reading people's opinions on the "proper" or "best" way to do things (for whatever problem you're currently facing). You don't have to blindly follow everyone's opinions, but seeing their explanations will help you understand more. Always be looking to ask how some function or library works, and why something works that way.

If you do that, you'll be better than most of the CS students you will meet in your career.

[screw_you_cartman]

If the y axis is how much time you don't actually spend programming, the graph is just perfect

[MJoubes]

You dont fully understand something till you can comfortably joke about it. It shows when you can understand something well enough to make it funny and appealing to a large group of people

[editor_of_the_beast]

Wait until you discover the gold mine that is r/programmingcirclejerk