Connie Mayo
Jan Wildeboer π·
Had to verify. And yes. Kernighan and Ritchie really did this. TIL :)
And no, Stroustroup did NOT do this in the C++ book and also no, Knuth didnβt do this in AOCP :)
Lucas Ramage γγ«γΌγ«γΉγ
CodeAsm
Saustrup@jwildeboer Stoustrup is perhaps tad less whimsical, although he had few funny remarks when I saw him at a conference in Berlin last year. "This is my boasting slide" he said, and pulled out a slide with a list of major technologies based on C++.
Amin Negm-AwadπͺπΊπ@saustrup "based on" or "written in"?
@RA_Negm "written in" probably. It/they wouldn't be there without C++.
@saustrup That's a bold claim.
Jeroen Wiert Pluimers@RA_Negm Similar claims can be made for the work of Niklaus Wirth and his teams. Sadly he passed away on January 1st. Let's try to learn as much of the few giants that are left as possible while they are still there.
@wiert To mention both Stoustrup and Wirth in one sentence is an insult β of Wirth.
SpeakerToManagers@saustrup @jwildeboer
In my years on the ANSI C++ standards committee I think Stroustrup told 1 or 2 jokes. He always seemed a very serious and determined person.
In my years on the ANSI C++ standards committee I think Stroustrup told 1 or 2 jokes. He always seemed a very serious and determined person.
Joel WebberOTOH, Stroustrup did publish this hilarious gem in '98: https://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf
Phil Landmeier@jwildeboer Okay, technically I agree. Knuth didn't do recursion, he had a circular reference in the index. And ten years before the first edition of K&R C.
Tim Ward βπͺπΊπΆ #FBPEKnuth's version was MUG (MIX user's group).
The one thing that K&R really could usefully have included in their book would have been the statement:
"Look, we've mangled the formatting of our examples and put the brackets all over the fucking place because our publishers told us to save space. It shouldn't need saying, but DON'T DO THIS AT HOME kids: put the brackets on lines by themselves FFS, just as you've been doing forever in ALGOL, BCPL, ect ect."
@jwildeboer I finally had some time to check out more on the history of these book index puns (having gained back energy after the refurbishing and move last winter exhausted me a bit too much):
Donald Knuth did put a recursion joke in The Art of Computer Programming - Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms.
- Index and Glossary page 631: "Circular Definition"
- Index and Glossary page 633: "Definition, Circular"
1/
@jwildeboer I need to check out the first and second edition of The Art of Computer Programming - Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms as well, as given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth I expect this to be in the first edition which makes me think he started this whole series of index puns.
In the end, a blog post will come up with more of these jokes as I think they are historically very interesting and it is remarkably hard to actually find the materials to make photos/screenshots from.
2/2
Bytebro π¬π§ πΊπ¦ π¬π±@wiert @jwildeboer No!!! I have all of AOCP at home, so absolutely must look this up later!
@bytebro @jwildeboer I am curious to see your results.
@wiert @jwildeboer Just checked my copies of TCPL and AOCP and both of these 'jokes' are in there. Thanks to whomever pointed these out, as otherwise I would never have known!
@bytebro @jwildeboer Jan came up with the TCPL one; I found the AOCP one.
@bytebro @jwildeboer thanks so much.
In the meantime, I have put all of them in a blog post:
John Carlsen πΊπΈπ³π±πͺπΊ@jwildeboer I bought that very book (when it was new, likely at a #ComputerLiteracy bookshop) and probably never saw that until now!
Also, I met Don Knuth, I think in 2019. :)
Piiieps & Brummm@johnlogic @jwildeboer
Met him twice. Once for a lecture in Stockholm and a year later at his 80th birthday conference in PiteΓ₯. Both times a funny story to tell ... :-)
Met him twice. Once for a lecture in Stockholm and a year later at his 80th birthday conference in PiteΓ₯. Both times a funny story to tell ... :-)
alt for @@jwildeboer This is obligatory in true computing texts.
bcl@jwildeboer Ah darn, Kernighan didn't do it in "The Go Programming Language". I guess I'll pencil it in.
Mans R@trini Does it also have "infinite loop - see loop, infinite" and vice versa?
Reclus@jwildeboer It's also in the german edition.
mmu_man@jwildeboer at least the exit condition comes first π
omc
Sappas@jwildeboer @PhilippeLhardy les premiers geeks ?! π
f4m8 ποΈ
armitageπ΅ββοΈβ
jwatt
hagfish fancier v1.618@jwatt @jwildeboer <3 Krazy Kat and Kludges
ΰ΄
ΰ΄ΰ΄Ώΰ΄²ΰ΅»
ΠΠ ΠΠΠΠ« ΠΠΠ’Π¬@jwildeboer Awesome! I used to use that text!
Tecci@jwildeboer sehr gut, awsome
roelofpieter@jwildeboer That is very funny π
crvs@jwildeboer wait... qsort is a C-lib builtin?
Oriel Jutty 
@crvs @jwildeboer Yeah, qsort and bsearch are standard C functions (declared in stdlib.h).
@@jwildeboer Turns out you can be nerdy _and_ funny _and_ not racist/misogynist/ableist. Who knew!?
chiasm@jwildeboer I learned C from that book! It was my bible for a long time...
sss@jwildeboer oh, this was my bible )
Matthias Kirschner@jwildeboer
Bit late but now I was finally able to check my old copy, and yes, I have the same edition as you have. :)
Bit late but now I was finally able to check my old copy, and yes, I have the same edition as you have. :)
@jwildeboer
Bought on 13 January 2004 for 27,90β¬... ;)
Bought on 13 January 2004 for 27,90β¬... ;)
lord pthenq1@jwildeboer
Their humor is more subtle than Adam Saddler's.
Their humor is more subtle than Adam Saddler's.
Eragon@jwildeboer I should check that in my version.
Tony Cheneau@jwildeboer Thanks for the tip. I had to check but it was lost on the French translation (Second edition). I'm glad I got the English version of the book as well.
destroyworlds@jwildeboer beautiful π
M0KHR Hakan@jwildeboer I have a copy somewhere, I'm sure I haven't thrown -that- book out.
J.T. Grimes@jwildeboer There's some sort of joke about the Bible and self-fulfilling prophesies that I'm not clever enough to make right now.
clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy πΈπͺππ°ππ@jtgrimes @jwildeboer The New Testament has some passages about actively trying to fulfill prophecies, which sounds so sinisterly Bene Gesserit I'm surprised they left them in there.
John Wilson@jwildeboer The 1st edition of the Java Language specification is full of this sort of thing
Ramanujan, Srinivasa, 224
On page 224 is an example with
class Super { static int taxi = 1729; }
It all disappeared in the 2nd edition
Your post reminded me of someone, so what is the chance they wrote about 1729 today!
https://mastodon.social/@ionica@mathstodon.xyz/111750326024706992
Regrettably that post by @ionica has disappeared, but this is another place explaining the love for the number 1729 in English:
https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/ionica-koos-een-getal-en-wij-maakten-dat-moeilijk
(not sure why Mastodon has been rate-limiting me over the last couple of days making posting tough, but the responses lately so many years after your initial post are because I finally found the combination of energy and time for writing up a blog post on the puns in these books)
I remember once going to see him [Ramanujan] when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi-cab No. 1729, and remarked that the number seemed to be rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_β¦
@tug TIL! Thanks!
Geert Bevin@jwildeboer Ooooh now I have to go look that up in my copy when I get home, very cool!
@jwildeboer awesome find