Brain the size of a planet, and working with MC Hammer



  • @Sutherlands said:

    @Kittemon said:
    I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be ironic, and assuming so, at which one of us it's directed.
    What do you think ironic means?...
    The same as sarcastic, I wager.

    <font size="1">The invisible shoulder aliens told me to answer the rhetorical question.</font>



  •  @flabdablet said:

    What's your take on this crowd, whose basic approach seems to be to identify and remedy the specific processing deficiencies underlying the dyslexia, as opposed to searching endlessly for workarounds?


    A more structured (and potentially quicker and more efficient) route to arrive at the same destination, at a guess.

    I didn't do any of the psychology stuff, I was on the receiving end of techniques used to shape and tweak my teaching delivery according to the audience. It sounds like that crowd have stopped their workaround searches and started to map specific techniques as solutions to recognisable deficiencies, which is a natural evolution in process maturity.

    We tried something similar introducing a new "thinking skills" technique in which students were invited to examine an image (usually a line-art picture) and think laterally about what they saw - what facts could they deduce and what clued them into that. I wasn't there long enough to see a measurable difference, but I did notice a slight change in attitude towards problems: some would back away and think more about the issue at hand rather than plough in and complain about how difficult it was when they experienced failure. Providing new techniques seemed to have armed students with fresh ammunition and gave them more confidence in their approach and they were less disheartened when the techniques didn't work.

    I'm theorising that the ArrowSmith program follows a similar approach: categorise the problem to select a more suitable technique. The site mentions proof of effectiveness - I'd be interested in seeing their metrics, both success and failure rates.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    @Kittemon said:
    I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be ironic, and assuming so, at which one of us it's directed.
    What do you think ironic means?...

    1. Employing or exemplifying irony.
    2. I asked you first, albeit in a roundabout manner.
    3. Nevermind, I'll rephrase: are you being a dumbass or a smartass? I've not read enough of your previous posts to judge appropriately.

    @Zecc said:

    The same as sarcastic, I wager.

    You lose the wager.



  • @Kittemon said:

    @Sutherlands said:
    @Kittemon said:
    I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be ironic, and assuming so, at which one of us it's directed.
    What do you think ironic means?...

    1. Employing or exemplifying irony.
    2. I asked you first, albeit in a roundabout manner.
    3. Nevermind, I'll rephrase: are you being a dumbass or a smartass? I've not read enough of your previous posts to judge appropriately.

    @Zecc said:

    The same as sarcastic, I wager.

    You lose the wager.
    Not before you declare what you understand by "sarcastic" .

     



  • This whole Kittemon ordeal reminds me of a tweet sent by "Weird" Al Yankovic, who said that a friend once told him he didn't understand irony, which was ironic because they were eating ice cream at the time.



  • @toon said:

    a friend once told him he didn't understand irony, which was ironic because they were eating ice cream at the time.
     

    That's funny because it's ironic. If the ice cream eating didn't actually happen, it's also sarcastic. Multi-layerd joke! Bonus!


  • BINNED

    @Kittemon said:

    are you being a dumbass or a smartass?
    Why not both?



  • @Zecc said:

    @Kittemon said:
    @Zecc said:
    The same as sarcastic, I wager.

    You lose the wager.
    Not before you declare what you understand by "sarcastic" .

    Something different than ironic, obviously.

    <font size="1">Loosely speaking, for the purposes of this increasingly silly conversation, sarcasm ⊂ irony. Discuss this concept with your shoulder alien.</font>



  •  @Kittemon said:

    @Zecc said:
    @Kittemon said:
    @Zecc said:
    The same as sarcastic, I wager.
    You lose the wager.
    Not before you declare what you understand by "sarcastic" .

    Something different than ironic, obviously.

    <font size="1">Loosely speaking, for the purposes of this increasingly silly conversation, sarcasm ⊂ irony. Discuss this concept with your shoulder alien.</font>

     

    a loose translation being "Shit, I have no idea what the words I used meant and have been called out on it, quickly! let's backpedal, beat around the bush and hope somebody else jumps in talking about something else!"

     



  • @Kittemon said:

    @Sutherlands said:
    @Kittemon said:
    I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be ironic, and assuming so, at which one of us it's directed.
    What do you think ironic means?...

    1. Employing or exemplifying irony.
    2. I asked you first, albeit in a roundabout manner.
    3. Nevermind, I'll rephrase: are you being a dumbass or a smartass? I've not read enough of your previous posts to judge appropriately.

    @Zecc said:

    The same as sarcastic, I wager.

    You lose the wager.
    Well, even though you don't understand irony, I was being serious in what I said.  Which makes me neither of your follow-up questions.

    @dhromed said:

    @toon said:

    a friend once told him he didn't understand irony, which was ironic because they were eating ice cream at the time.

    That's funny because it's ironic. If the ice cream eating didn't actually happen, it's also sarcastic. Multi-layerd joke! Bonus!

    That's not irony >.>



  • @BC_Programmer said:

    a loose translation being "Shit, I have no idea what the words I used meant and have been called out on it, quickly! let's backpedal, beat around the bush and hope somebody else jumps in talking about something else!"

    A precise translation being: "If I provide a definition, someone will say it's wrong, even if it isn't wrong. If I copy a definition from a dictionary, someone will say that I don't understand the definition, while someone else will deride my choice of dictionary brand as being considered non-authoritative and generally looked down upon on account of its sloppy definitions, etc."

    I wasn't in the mood to delve into that bit of nonsense; naturally, it occurred anyway.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    @Kittemon said:
    I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be ironic

    Well, even though you don't understand irony,

    What? I was trying to figure out what meaning you intended to convey, because it sounded a lot like a blakeyrant, but then again you might have meant it seriously. I didn't claim that I thought it was ironic.

    @Sutherlands said:

    I was being serious in what I said.

    "No, this is not meant to be ironic."

    @Sutherlands said:

    Which makes me neither of your follow-up questions.

    That's still open for debate, given that what you wrote wasn't actually a counterpoint to what I wrote.





  • [url=http://zs1.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100317after.gif][img]http://zs1.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100317.gif[/img][/url]



  • {@joe.edwards said:

    @Zecc said:

    @Severity One said:

    @joe.edwards said:

    I knew I hated Ruby as soon as I saw you could put the conditional test AFTER the statement.
    You're not a big fan of Perl either, I suppose.

    Perl has the 'unless' statement. You can write an entire block of statements and at the very end write 'unless ( expr )'.

     

    Saying you dislike Perl because of it allowing you to put conditionals at the end of statements is like saying you disliked Osama bin Laden because he had his hair unkempt.

     

    Or drawing a simile between a programming language and a terrorist.

     

    Yes, I would probably hate Perl as well. Write-only language and all that.

    Blakey's workflow is to watch the debugger and see what happens. I read code like a narrative, running statement by statement in my head and updating state accordingly. If I read ten (or worse, 50+) lines of code and at the very end I see " } unless( foo )" I feel like the code just shouted "HA! TRICKED YOU!" It's like finding out the last 10 chapters of a novel were really just a bad dream sequence. It just totally fucks my mental interpreter. Even with a single line, I'll have to read it and then see the condition and undo the changes to the registers in my mental VM. I'm capable of doing this, but it basically feels like stubbing my toe.

    If the language allows it, I know someone will use it, and then I'll end up having to support it. When I write code, my number one priority is making sure it won't be painful for me to go back and maintain, fix, update, or debug. This "feature" goes against the spirit of that goal.

    } if false

    HA! PSYCHE!



  • @spamcourt said:

    You forgot:<style> /* Too bad this isn't working :( */ .visibleonhover_1234 { visibility: hidden; } .makeitvisible_1234 .visibleonhover_1234 { visibility: visible; } </style>

     



  •  SMBC is good.


  • Considered Harmful

    @Ben L. said:

    {@It was all a nightmare said:
    } if false

    HA! PSYCHE!

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


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