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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • I remember being forced to learn this in university.

    I started CS from the POV of someone with several commercial projects under the belt and at the time being fluent already in five or six different programming languages. But the university where I started had had an issue - they had been way to theoretical (imagine people writing their CS thesis on a mechanical typewriter, and professors telling us that one does not need computer access for mastering CS!). So they had been more or less forced to include at least a bit of real world stuff into their blackboard and paper world. Which resulted in a no-excuse-mandatory beginners course in Turbo Pascal in the first year and Turbo Prolog in the second.

    And I was not alone. It was painful. They showed a programming task to be done on the overhead projector, and about 90% of us could have just typed down the answer without thinking and be done with the weekly assignment in five minutes. Nope. Instead, we had to follow (and join) a lengthy, boring, and worthless discussion about the very basics of programming, before we were allowed to work on it. And woe to us if we did not follow the precise path that we had been “taught” in that lesson, even if it was done in a way that no normal programmer would ever implement it.

    If they had given us all the assignments for the semester in one go, we would probably had finished them in one afternoon, including documentation and time to spare.

    At least with Turbo Prolog we learned something new. First and foremost that there are strong reasons that nobody uses Prolog for serious programming.


  • No, it isn’t. I have dined exceptionally well in the UK. Our Christmas dinner is based on an a recipe from an English cook. We have a Scottish cafe/diner in town which serves excellent food.

    OK, I’ve dined horribly, too, but it is definitely not the norm - I made the mistake of ordering half a chicken in a fish and chips shop. My recommendation: Don’t repeat my mistake.


  • Treczoks@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlExcuse me, sir
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    1 year ago

    I once gave our telco/internet provider the permission to call me on my main number if they have an interesting update regarding our contract. That went without problems for over ten years. One or two calls a year, and usually something worth thinking about.

    Then their marketing decided to pull all stops and call us, on all our numbers, not just the main one, but also the kids personal phones. And not only from their official numbers, but random numbers all over the country. We suddenly got a dozen calls a day(!) from them, offering the same two products (at least where we picked up and declined the offer) again, and again, and over again. We blocked numbers, and new ones came up. The block list went from two entries to over thirty. I had to threaten legal action got get our numbers blocked again, and get them marked as such according to our privacy laws.

    Silence returned.