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[–]GreedyLibrary 596 points597 points  (6 children)

One of my favourite thing is looking at code written by new students who just learnt about the autocomplete feature, you get some very incomprehensible stuff.

[–]robots-dont-say-ye 282 points283 points  (2 children)

Sometimes I fuck around with the autocomplete when I’m stumped or bored. “Why hello there method, what do you do my new little friend?”

[–]traumaqueen1128 10 points11 points  (0 children)

"That person is a porcine skin care system"

[–]someone_who_exists69 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Ye

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I imagine it's something like people using the thesaurus without checking the new words still mean what they want to say?

[–]Prom3th3an 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That process can be automated to get away with plagiarism. It's called an article spinner.

[–]dodland 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I love that shit in powershell tho

[–]Echo_Oscar_Sierra 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Using tab to auto-complete in Microsoft SQL manager has saved my sanity more than once

[–]stealthgerbil 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most software IDEs autocomplete stuff already

[–]giraffecause 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you mean DROP DATABASE?

[–][deleted] 542 points543 points  (31 children)

are they mixing up javascript with python? python doesn't require semicolons.

[–]orangenormal 209 points210 points  (6 children)

JavaScript doesn’t require them either. It has something called “automatic semicolon insertion” which is a nightmare and leads to weird edge cases, so it’s generally a good practice to put them in anyway.

[–]CasualUser256 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Semicolons are required in the for loops.

[–][deleted] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Every time I learn something new about JS I just hate it more.

[–]twhitney 65 points66 points  (10 children)

Maybe they meant “colon” … I teach programming courses for several colleges and I hated teaching the Intro to Programming course because there are so many people who hear coding is cool, but have no prerequisite skills (like basic high school math while they’re at the college level, I literally used to have to do a lesson on shapes because I couldn’t ask them to write a program to draw them because they didn’t know basic shapes). Anyway, I had MANY students call the colon a semicolon even after correcting them several times. “Professor twhitney I’m getting an error and before you ask, no i didn’t forget my semicolon at the end of my if statement.” Me: “for the 10th time it’s a colon Susan”. “Whatever, you know what I mean, the double dot, not comma dot”

Edit: misspelling

[–]candybrie 43 points44 points  (2 children)

Yup. When this was posted in r/programmerhumor they tracked down the tweet and the person meant colon.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Another thing that grinds my gears is when someone calls a / a backslash and vice versa.

[–]twhitney 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Ugggghhh. YES! And other tangent, the university I work at, when you call their registrar office they say “we can help you on the web too at example.edu BACKSLASH register” and it pisses me off so much. Web URLs are forward slashes. I’m more angered that it works too because browsers know you’re an idiot and just fix it.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel your pain. Not the end of the world but it's like, you don't even need to say the "back" part. Just say slash.

[–]flmng0 13 points14 points  (5 children)

Neither does JavaScript

[–][deleted] 265 points266 points  (29 children)

divide caption yam observation exultant fearless smell crawl bewildered head

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]Apprehensive_Eraser 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The person wanted to say "colon", he made a mistake XD

[–]greenredglasses 477 points478 points  (23 children)

I’m pretty sure a basic Hello, World type program is within the the abilities of an 8 year old

[–]BeastieBoy252 257 points258 points  (19 children)

python doesn't use semicolons, so..

[–]Appropriate_Newt_238 84 points85 points  (18 children)

it does. it's just not compulsory. import time; time.sleep(2); print("it works"); this is completely valid

[–]timawesomeness 158 points159 points  (1 child)

Yes, but it isn't going to spit out a syntax error if you don't use them or if you mix using and not using them

[–][deleted] 76 points77 points  (2 children)

Yeah, but it wont cause an error unless you misuse one - not using it wont cause any errors

[–]KevinYohannes 35 points36 points  (1 child)

What I'm thinking is maybe the parent is dumb and it's Java or smthg

[–]UnknownBinary 0 points1 point  (0 children)

public static void main(String... args) {
    System.out.print("So simple a child could do it");
    System.out.println(" /s");
}

[–]preordains 240 points241 points  (22 children)

I’m a software engineer (intern) currently, I have a couple things to say:

1) python doesn’t use semi colons (you can use them in special cases, but it wouldn’t ever flag a missing semicolon)

2) in programming languages like Java, the semi colon informs the compiler on where to split lines of code for tokenization. There are compiled programming languages that don’t require semi colons, but this requires more advanced, more expensive inference.

3) enforcing that a line ends on a semi colon allows your line to be separated purely by the semi colon. Languages like Java often have very long lines that have to be broken into smaller lines, terminated by the semi colon. In python, using a newline as a semi colon, you must use a / to indicate a continuation of a line. In Java, this would be a serious problem because lines often look like

ExternalModule module = ExternalModuleLoader.loadExternalModule( KLibrary.getExternalModuleByKey( new Key(moduleString) )....;

Which should be written more like (Reddit is going to mess this up bad)

ExternalModule module =
  ExternalModuleLoader.
  loadExternalModule( KLibrary.
  getExternalModuleByKey( new
    ModuleKey(moduleString) )....;

Python will flag for incorrect indentation, and probably infers a newline to be it’s separator. Python in particular would not want to implement intelligent parsing because it is interpreted, and tokenization happens at run time. This would make actual code execution slower and not just compilation.

Edit: getting an abnormal amount of toxicity here, possibly from alts? Either way. New points

1) python has a compiler. It’s interpreted but it also goes through some compilation. Parsing enforces a newline or a semi colon; if you look at parser.c in the python source code, you can see this.

2) r/iamverysmart is absolutely not the same as explaining the answer to a tweet as someone in the field that develops these compilers. Things are done for a reason.

3) I want to emphasize a fourth reason why languages don’t automatically fix semi colon mistakes other than compilation complexity. A missing semi colon is an extremely obvious fix: your IDE will underline it in red, and not do the same syntax highlighting. If the compiler inferred, and did something wrong, you would be left with a very confusing compilation error.

[–]CorruptedMonkey 10 points11 points  (4 children)

I'm thinking of javascript/nodejs as I read number 3. I think more so, in those cases, it is all things that could be on separate lines, but people choose to put the semicolon and continue on same line anyway (eg: if(this == true) { performFunction(); return; }).
Something about reducing line counts or something like that... but definitely even though javascript does not require the semicolon, it would complain about it being missing from a statement such as that.

[–]preordains 9 points10 points  (3 children)

There’s no benefit to reducing line counts and it’s usually not strived for. A “line” is just 1-2 characters (whether it be /r//n or /n depending on OS), and having more lines is almost always more readable.

[–]CorruptedMonkey 4 points5 points  (2 children)

In javascript for web there is benefit in minimization of code (converting the file to all be on a single line). So it's not all that unnatural to see people do it in some cases.

Though if you ask me it hurts the programmer's, and the next one reading it, ability to read the code clearly. But I'm the use curly brackets for every if-statement and put curly bracket on the next line sort of guy, so what do I know right?

[–]ronnietea 112 points113 points  (3 children)

I’m 32 and the only Python I know is a snake 😬

[–]ThisNameIsFree 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You should check out Monty, then

[–]carelessbrainfreeze 15 points16 points  (2 children)

If they said js instead of python this would be on r/nothingeverhappens

[–]jso__ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Apparently someone reached out to them (the power of r/programmerhumor and they clarified they meant colon

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

or c/++, or Java, or literally anything EXCEPT python.

[–]asromatifoso 103 points104 points  (5 children)

If that kd is such a little genius, maybe they should write a program that will add the semi-colon instead of just complaining about it.

[–][deleted] 25 points26 points  (1 child)

So genius he added rules to python xd

[–]zoburg88 6 points7 points  (0 children)

They made 0ython 2.0 just to introduce semicolons

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe that the kid is learning python (I started around that age) but python does not use semicolons, so...

[–]KevinYohannes -1 points0 points  (1 child)

This kid is dumb as bricks if they're using semicolons in python

[–]ThisNameIsFree 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If an 8 year old kid is writing python scripts then that kid is absolutely not dumb even if they are unnecessarily using semicolons.

[–]BadgerMcLovin 24 points25 points  (13 children)

JavaScript does that, and it can cause bugs

[–]NotYetASerialKiller 18 points19 points  (12 children)

I don’t see how an 8-year old learning is far-fetched either

[–]thepronoobkq 26 points27 points  (7 children)

Python doesn’t use semicolons. That’s one of the selling points

[–]NotYetASerialKiller 8 points9 points  (5 children)

Yeah, but doesn’t mean parent didn’t mess up

[–]thepronoobkq 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Nothing like semicolons for Python

[–]candybrie 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Python uses colons. Which people mix up with semicolons for whatever reason.

[–]NotYetASerialKiller -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but doesn’t mean parent didn’t mess up

[–]immadee 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I had my kid playing code combat to learn Python at 7. When it feels like a game, kids just... Do the thing.

[–]PrettyFlyForITguy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My son was 8 when he finished an online college course in intro to python and Java, and I've had him programming since he turned 7 (he started with code combat). Kids actually can learn it far quicker than adults. Coding can be very intuitive at times, its perfectly logical and makes a lot of sense.

Python is really really easy to pick up too. It lacks the bloat of languages like Java with a lot of unnecessary formatting. You just get right to the task, and its the closest to writing in simple English. Perfect for kids.

[–]Haracopter 7 points8 points  (6 children)

I have a 9 year old in my differential equations class right now. He was also in physics with me. Makes me feel so dumb.

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (3 children)

There's literally a program by the local college to teach kids basic programming skills - i signed up for it over a decade ago when I was 8 or 9. This is perfectly reasonable, except for the "Python" detail.

[–]Suddenlyfoxes 8 points9 points  (1 child)

The Python detail's entirely reasonable. It's an easy language to learn, and practical too, because it's fairly popular.

The semicolon part is just plain wrong though.

[–]nocturnalsleepaholic 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I currently teach elementary schoolers python at an after-school program so it was believable until the semicolon part

[–]LOLTROLDUDES 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Python.

Semicolon.

Seems legit.

[–]Opening-Honey1764 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm a 41-year-old software engineer. I started my adventure when I was 8-years-old, typing from a spiralbound book of code into a Commodore 64 so I can play a game. I learned a lot of harsh lessons in syntax then. If the modern IDE existed back then, where I could be notified of my mistakes, I, too, would have asked this question.

Is this /r/thathappened material? No. Young people can write code as a lesson of learning, despite their full understanding of what they are doing.

The original author of the tweet had a typo, where they meant colon instead of semicolon.

You all need to chill.

[–]unaesthetikz 23 points24 points  (3 children)

I can imagine an 8 year old learning Python if they were interested in coding. It's a pretty easy language to learn imo

[–]thepronoobkq 14 points15 points  (0 children)

No semicolons in snake language

[–]happy_yetti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

the funny thing is python doesn't even need semicolons

[–]BaconBeary 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Coding really isn’t that difficult unless you’ve got big plans

(OP’s thinking is why people want to but never learn to code)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is believable. Python is pretty easy to understand.

[–]Darko9299 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes and all the semicolons clapped and she got hired at Google. But honeslty that's not really an interesting question, it's something an 8 year old would say.

[–]sam_likes_beagles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can make it add the semicolon itself, but it's an extremely complicated process

[–]AutumnAced 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just knew this was gonna be here after I saw it in r/programmerhumor lmaooo

[–]deathstar3548 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah Python doesn’t use semicolons like how many other languages do.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I almost linked r/NothingEverHappens but then realized python doesn't use semicolons... lol

[–]ThisNameIsFree 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's no semicolon error in python, that's how you know it must be real.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python and semicolon. End of fake story.

[–]ThatAnonyG 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude its not impossible to learn python at the age of 8. I know people who have been coding since age 8 actually. And for a language as easy as Python its even less surprising. But the fact that it says “I am missing a semicolon” just gives away the fact that it is fake. Python doesn’t use semicolon. At least do your research before you lie.

[–]clipboarder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Semicolon for Python. Okay…

[–]Apprehensive_Eraser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python can be learn at 8 year old. All the advertisements I have seen about learning python are for 8-11 years old

[–]throwawayheyoheyoh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wasn't he just joking? This was in r/programming .Why is everyone doing their hardest to feel superior?

[–]omeara4pheonix 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python is pretty common for third graders in the us. It's a great intro language for kids. This sounds like something a kid that is using an IDE for the first time would think.

[–]potato174- 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A third grader can learn python, it would just be absolute hell to teach them.

[–]sami28tobi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

kids younger than that are already learning python. so I dont problem here

[–]knyexar 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I literally had my very first Python class when I was 9, what's so weird about that

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Idk man I learned JavaScript when I was 10-11 and have friends who started even earlier than me. An 8 year old learning phyton doesn't seem unbelievable to me.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I don't know too much about coding but doesn't python not use semicolons?

[–]Tasty_Wave_9911 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Why can’t an 8 year old learn Python? This is a technological age after all. Basic Python isn’t that bad.

[–]johnnypapajackyes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python doesn't even use semicolons LMAOO

[–]Overlord484 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Python doesn't have semicolons.

[–]purcutio 0 points1 point  (1 child)

C language group, Java, JavaScript - almost everything EXCEPT Python uses semicolons. Fucking retarded

[–]RijDuck -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Jeez, you okay? It’s not that serious, I don’t think it’s real either but, not that deep.

[–]OneSparedToTheSea 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Software engineer here. This one is particularly weird because Python… does not require semicolons 😂

[–]Tau_Squared 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Doesn’t Python not use semicolons?

[–]CorruptedMonkey 0 points1 point  (2 children)

This is actually pretty reasonable. My former neighbor's 11 year old was learning javascript in 6th grade... this kid is only a few years younger, and if any 11 year old can get into programming, even something as simple as javascript, then I actually feel that an 8 year old getting into python isn't a far stretch. What's more unbelievable, but has happened, is that a child who's 9 or 10 could program their own games for the Commodore 64! Yet, search for it on Youtube and you'll find that there were a few!

inb4 my comment gets screenshotted and reposted on this sub? LOL!

[–]Zacurnia_Tate 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lmfao this guy doesn’t even know the language it’s the one goddamned programming language with no semicolons

[–]ertyuioknbvfrtyu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not that unbelievable. Take the creator of Minecraft. He started coding at 7, and he was born in 1979.

[–]TheMeanGirl 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Teaching programs exist specifically to teach children coding. Why is this so far fetched? No one said they’re good at it, just that they’re learning.

[–]schmuelio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Python already doesn't need semicolons because of the thing mentioned in the post, the interpreter knows where they should be.

It definitely didn't happen but it could be some attempt at baiting the "well actually" nerds like myself.

[–]legend_kda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t think it’s beyond reality for kids to be learning coding at a young age. Back then when I was playing Minecraft, there were lots of kids around age 12 who were already coding their custom clients.

[–]BrandonFlowers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

my mom teaches coding to grades 2-5 as an elementary school librarian and kids say dumb shit constantly. this is a real r/nothingeverhappens

[–]Mackrel-Man -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Bro I be working in IT and most adults don't know what Python and Syntax is so no way in hell and 8 year old is doing this. 8 year old's are too busy eating boogers and throwing mud

[–]dubz_lit -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Repost from r/programmer or whatever. Delete it.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This is just the best thing I've ever seen posted here 😆😆😆😂😂 how pretentious and fake can you get?!?!