Programming jokes

[JBotAlan]

Some more:

My autonomous updating function is named AUT_DoScaryStuff().
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I am the only person on the controls team that isn't a newbie. The newbies were putting together this year's control board, and (name omitted) said he was finished. As he plugged in the battery, a large spark jumped from the terminal, and nothing powered up. We all got an enormous sinking feeling...but it was time to call it a night, and we left.

At the next meeting, I found myself using a multimeter to check the resistance of each Victor, Spike, and the RC to see if anything was shorted. I re-checked every wire very painstakingly, but found no fault. I tested each Victor with our bench power supply. Still no dice. I looked over the circuit breaker, testing conductivity all the way through. I could not find anything anywhere that would indicate what the heck was going on. Finally, I inspected the battery we were using. The connection seemed okay; red went to the + side of the battery like it should...but what I saw on the other side was quite humorous, though it coaxed a few "bad words" out of me at the time: the Anderson pair that one of the newbies put together had red running into - and black running into +; when it was plugged in, + went to - and - went to +, causing a large amount of current to be drawn, every breaker to pop, and a large spark to jump off the contact when plugged in.

The punchline?

This is the second time I've done this.

Always, always check the simple things first! Otherwise you'll feel dumb when your problem isn't in fact a bad Victor, but really just a reverse-polarity battery.

--as a side note, I learned that day that Anderson pairs can be taken apart if necessary. You learn something every day, whether you like it or not...

King of reverse-polarity,
JBot

[Adamskiy]

We used a USB chicklet ($150) this year with our Xbox 360 controller, which as some of you may know takes up to a 9V DC input (the chicklet, I mean). We got it out one day and were looking through the manual when one of the newbies took it upon himself to power it up. Luckily I stopped him, with half an inch to spare, from plugging it into a 24V DC power supply he found laying around.

In our code this year, one of the students had written to functions for testing/prototype purposes, and named them "ROFLMAO" and "ROFLMAO2"....but we then ended up using them in the final code.

[JohnC]

Originally Posted by whytheheckme

As opposed to the really useful work that the robot does during the rest of the game?

The inspirational power of seeing robots move "automagically" is underestimated. Sure, the moving around that they do isn't of immediate benefit to anyone. But I'd say it's worth it if just one small child is inspired to become an engineer.

To legitimize this post, I guess I should include more jokes.

while(!center) {
  lick();
  licks++;
}

and

$ chown -r us ./yourbase

[Storcky]

Not quite programming, but software related:

After finishing the last of our scouting input, we tried to check and make sure our information was correct. The database showed that we only had 39 forms filled in instead of 300+! It was about 11:00 at night and we had to wake up 2 mentors because no one could remember how to do a System Restore. I said "I give up! I'm done with computers! I'm going to bed!" About 2 minutes later, I came back to the room. "OK, I'm done being done with computers. What's wrong?"
It turned out that the information was all still there and that we had it set under a filter of some sort.

[Jake M]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

Some more:
--as a side note, I learned that day that Anderson pairs can be taken apart if necessary. You learn something every day, whether you like it or not...

As another side note, I've been wanting to know how to do this for quite some time.....

And as for jokes, I still like my signature and title.

[thegathering]

Originally Posted by JohnC

$ chown -r us ./yourbase

I have a "chown -r us ./base" shirt from Jinx that I wear to school once a week ^_^

[esquared]

Question: What's a pirate's favorite variable? (I'll leave the answer blank so a few people have a chance to guess)

Answer:

[MattD]

Originally Posted by esquared

Question: What's a pirate's favorite variable? (I'll leave the answer blank so a few people have a chance to guess)

Answer:

An arg?

[ChrisMcK2186]

please pardon the terrible coding, I can't even get matlab to work, so I apologize.

if(night==sleep)
disp("off season")
elseif(night==FRC)
disp("6 weeks left")

heres another I'll try

if(input=hammer)
then(hardwareprob.)
if(input=code)
then(typelikecrazy)
elseif
then(getmorementors)

Chris

[SgtMillhouse648]

Originally Posted by Athleticgirl389

Our team used that A LOT this year lol. Also, "Nope, we're still over weight... put in the lighter code.'"

With our "origional" autonomous, we had over 1000 lines of code. When the robot was overweight one of the kids wanted us to lighten the code.

With the VEX USB to serial adapter, we figured up that we spent more time downloading code than the time we spent building the robot. With about 2 minutes per download, it starts to add up

[sonicx059]

Originally Posted by mtaman02

Everything on this robot needs to lose weight, I don't care what you gotta do to get it off just lose the weight, start with the code and work your way back to the hardware.

WEll our robot was barly 70lbs and when they asked for somthing else in the code either me or marteal did and the driver still complained so we just started to blame it on human error.

[Kuru Oujou]

Mentor: "We need to save weight more than ever this year."
Programmer: "Don't worry, we are using the smallest font possible."

[Astronouth7303]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

That's about the time I started putting in "defensive diagnostics" so I could easily demonstrate that the code was operating properly, and could quickly determine when undesired operation was due to disconnected wiring or misbehaving mechanisms.

I've done this since I started. The dashboard is invaluable for this. A custom one is especially handy, since you can display just what's needed in an understandable fashion.

I'll have to remember that term, too. "Defensive diagnostics." It's usually not a code problem, but it doesn't hurt to check.

Oh, the joke.

meal = ["spam"]*20 + ["eggs"]

(It's a Python thing. Move along.)

[ChrisMcK2186]

are you sure you wouldn't like

meal=["spam"]*20-["eggs"]+["spam"]

?

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by JBotAlan

My autonomous updating function is named AUT_DoScaryStuff().

My roommate and I are considering patenting* the idea that we call "negative programming". People always say that computers only do exactly what you tell them to, but we've smashed that paradigm and moved on to telling it what not to do. We competed in the Mobot competition at Carnegie Mellon last year, which is essentially an outdoor line-tracking contest. Our small-wheeled robot was having some trouble getting over the bigger cracks in the sidewalk. There's also a portion of the course where the line forks and crosses over itself, and you have to make some decisions. Functions for handling these two problems were respectively named dont_get_stuck() and dont_cross(). You call dont_get_stuck(), and it doesn't get stuck. Good robot.

* I am not actually advocating software patents.