If Discourage was like construction


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    Continuing the discussion from @SCOTUSblog:

    @Intercourse said:

    On Discourse, isn't everything a WONTFIX? ;)

    Continuing the discussion from If construction was like software:

    @xaade said:

    Customer
    Developer

    C I want a bridge
    D Ok, what kind of bridge
    C You don't know what a bridge is? Land on this side, land on that side, road touch here, road touch there, go.
    D Ok?

    1 year later

    C No No, big boats will come through here, I need it to let the boats through
    D Uh, we're halfway built, there's concrete everywhere. Ok ok. How about this. A vertical lift.
    C What, that's boring. It needs to be flashy. What's this, swivel, that's cool.
    D You don't have enough room for a swivel bridge if you want boats that big to get through.
    C The customer is always right. Make a swivel bridge. How long.
    D Well we need to repurpose the current structure, so that will take a while.
    C 1 more year. Or I go somewhere else.
    D You'll still have to pay us for our work.
    C No I don't. You didn't make a bridge, and my contract says a bridge.
    D No, the contract had the exact design we chose.
    C SWIVEL.

    6 months later.

    D Ok, so through a massive advance in building technology using some cool quantum physics tricks, I have a bridge that swivels but doesn't take up space.
    C What? There's no way I'm going to pay for that.
    D Fine, we'll give you a discount.
    C Ok, I'm going to drive on it.
    D But, we haven't even tested the model yet.
    C We need it now. I have to start making deliveries on this new route. I'm going to test it myself.
    D No wait!!!

    Car crashes.

    D ... I haven't installed the bridge yet.

    If Discourage was like construction:

    C: = Customer
    D: = Dickweed aka Jeff Atwood

    C: I need you to build me a road and some bridges
    D: No problem. We have this new way of doing that. With AJAX, we only deliver the part of the road or bridge that you need, when you need it.

    C: Why not just build the road and such, and then we can drive on it.
    D: Because that's doing it wrong. This is the new way to do things.

    C: What was wrong with the old way of doing things?
    D: Uhmmmmmm, they were doing it wrong.

    C: Why? What was wrong with the way it was done?
    D: crickets*

    After delivery

    C: So, we noticed that sometimes this new AJAX road construction does not load the road fast enough and people careen off in to the wilderness and die.
    D: That's the price of progress.

    C: OK, that is a bit dickish. But, if we just built the entire road, then people could just drive on it and...not die.
    D: They are doing it wrong.

    C: They are just driving.
    D: They should drive the way I say they should. But sometimes our AJAX road cannot keep up, and shit happens.

    C: Also, usually when people decide to turn around and go back the way they came from, they end up hitting a brick wall and dying.
    D: Why would they turn around? That is not an accepted way of using my roads. WONTFIX

    C: Well, sometimes people forget shit at home, or they get lost, maybe they shit their pants and need to go home? Why does it fucking matter? And why is it your road all of a sudden? We paid to have it put in, and the drivers pay for it by looking at the billboards and shit. Why are you such a pretentious fucking asshole? Who are you to tell US how to use OUR fucking road?
    D: I told you that they are doing it wrong. Going back the way you came is a barrier to driving.

    C:Your rolling the road up behind them is a HUGE barrier to fucking driving. Jesus fuck, you are an obnoxious fucking prick. OK, next question: Our mile markers now make no fucking sense. They only go up to 20 miles, and then the next one says 10 miles. Lather, rinse, repeat.
    D: Yeah, that is the magic of AJAX. You don't need mile markers. You are obviously doing it wrong.

    C: If you say that one more time, I am going to bash your fucking face in with a shovel. I swear to fuck I will.
    D: We installed a mile marker counter in everyone's car, and it tells them what mile marker they are on.

    C: But we had fucking mile markers before, and they fucking worked, and we liked them, and there was nothing fucking wrong with them. I might bash your head in with a shovel and consider it putting chlorine in the gene pool.
    D: You are doing it...

    C: grabs shovel
    D: Sorry.

    C: OK, next problem. There are no fucking rest stops on the longer roads. How are people supposed to make a multiple thousand mile journey all in one go? This seems like an enormous fucking oversight!
    D: No road should be thousands of miles long. That is doi...we came up with a better way to do things. Long journeys are a barrier to driving. We built our roads to be completely overwhelming so that no one would want to drive that far on our roads. People really should break journeys like that up in to multiple different journeys.

    C: Seriously, I am also going to use this shovel to bury you in a shallow grave after I beat you to death with it. What was wrong with the way things were? This seems like a solution looking for a problem. Some of the other roads are a bit ugly, but they work
    D: Those people are doing it wr...

    C: **BASH!! Fuck all. Well, he fucking deserved it.



  • Nice. I was going to go with a much simpler analogy:

    C: I want a house.
    D: Here's a house.

    C: It looks very nice, but the walls seem a bit sloped.
    D: That's by design. It's the future of housing. Everyone's going to want it in 10 years.

    C: Hmm, the paint job's cracking and the walls are more sloped. What foundations did you use?
    D: We tried these foundations that are great for chicken coops, figured it'd work fine here. And the paint job, that's by design too. In 10 years everyone's going to want it that way.

    house collapses

    C: furious This is a piece of shit.
    D: You're a douche but I love you anyway, and this is the future of housing.


  • 🚽 Regular

    These analogies reminds me of SpectateSwamp as a bridge engineer



  • ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

    Would read again.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I read a couple of pages of that thread and I realized a few things:

    Jeff Atwood and SpectateSwamp might be brothers.

    Pagination is really fucking handy.

    Discourage runs like shit on mobile.

    The old forum is really snappy on mobile.

    Replying on mobile on this forum is absolute shit.



  • @Intercourse said:

    Jeff Atwood … is absolute shit.

    Your post was a bit TL;DR, so I made an executive summary. Hope you like it.



  • 😆

    Bookmarking to read again.



  • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    Would read again.



  • I regret that I have but one like to give for this post.



  • @Intercourse said:

    C: **BASH!! Fuck all. Well, he fucking deserved it.

    Just one question: did he get hit hard enough that you require a new shovel? I think we could crowd-fund that for you.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    If he had, I would consider it a mitzvah, even though I am not Jewish.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    C: Some of the people who drive on this road notice their cars slow to a crawl and overheat.
    D: Are they driving cars with Android engines?

    C: Yeah, why?
    D: I thought so. Our roads do not support Android cars. Our roads cannot be made to work well with them.

    C: But all of the other roads that Android cars are on work fine. Why can't your roads work with them?
    D: Because I am right, and everyone else is doing it wrong. The roads work fine with my ZR1 Corvette though.

    C: You're a fucking prick. Not everyone has a ZR-1.
    D: They should. I cannot really support anything less.

    C: Other roads can be driven on with a moped, but your roads suck unless you have a super car.
    D: Sucks to be them. We only support super cars. Android cars can go fuck themselves.

    C: I fucking hate you. Why is it that anytime someone changes gears a motherfucking toaster pops up on their windshield and obscures their view?
    D: Because that is the way things are done now.

    C: I swear to fuck I am going to shank you with a rusty icepick... Are you related to SpectateSwamp?
    D: Related? That is my alter ego!! Have you seen the search function on this road? Random random. Works great!


  • :belt_onion:

    @Intercourse said:

    D: Related? That is my alter ego!! Have you seen the search function on this road? Random random. Works great!

    Clearly they are not related... search works better in SSDS than in Dicsourse.



  • C: I've only just realised that some side roads are hidden to me
    D: Of course. You wouldn't want to see every single turn off so we only show you the ones we think you'll be interested in. Distractions are a barrier to driving.



  • C: I can't see the road signs unless I hover over them. And hover cars won't be available until next year!
    D: You're Doing It Wrong™. You should be living in 2015, Marty.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    I was hoping more people would join the fun.


  • :belt_onion:

    C: My car slid off the road and wrecked from all the random glitter you piled up in the lanes.
    D: No it didn't. I'm driving and there is no slippery spot.

    C: But look I took a photo, my car is right there, in the ditch... you see that Camaro? That's my car, it slid off the road.
    D: No it's not. It can't have slid off the road. See, I'm still on the road fine.

    C: Really?! How the fuck does that have anything to do with the thing that has actually happened and which we can both clearly see in this motherfucking photograph.
    D: Sorry, can't reproduce, driving is clearly working fine. You must be doing it wrong.

    S: Sorry, we'll remove the glitter from that section of the road so you can drive.
    C: Finally someone with reading comprehension skills



  • that's definitely your fault for buying GM.


    Filed under: getting hit by a blue turtle shell on rainbow road



  • Christ, Jeff doesn't have shares in GM does he?



  • "You don't have an ignition switch failure, you're just Doing It Wrong™"



  • I don't have a car, how does that stack up?



  • That makes you a commoner.



  • Finally, we agree on my lack of being awesome.



  • @chubertdev said:

    That makes you a commoner peasant.

    FTFY



  • Like anyone here was surprised that I'm a peasant rather than a commoner.



  • @Arantor said:

    Like anyone here was surprised that I'm a peasant rather than a commoner.

    I had to fix it for posterity.



  • I'm just glad my true standing in the community is clear. I mean, I already knew it but I've had enough difficulty convincing people that I'm TRWTF, let alone a peasant-grade TRWTF.



  • @Arantor said:

    let alone a peasant-grade TRWTF

    When did @Arantor get upgraded to peasant-grade and why wasn't I consulted?



  • No, no, you misunderstand, first I was normal, then demoted to commoner, then demoted to peasant.


  • BINNED

    It could be worse. You could be the village idiot.



  • You mean I'm not?



  • Please don't set up a competition for that title. We have too many people that could give it a good shot.



  • Jeff, Swampy, me, who else?


  • BINNED

    Is there a badge for that yet?



  • You think you beat out @Nagesh? Or in evidence for another there are @ben_lubar's bizarre obsessions with lojban, Go, and so on.



  • Idiocy is relative. One cannot fault someone who does not know they fail.


  • BINNED

    C: Why the hell does my car sometimes randomly jump on your road?
    D: Must be a pothole.
    C: Nope, last time it jumped I stopped and checked. No potholes.
    D: Ok, what kind of car?
    C: The fuck does it matter? It's a road. It's built for cars. Cars were built for roads.
    D: It's important, not all cars are the same.
    C: Sigh... all right, it's a Nissan Pathfinder.
    D: Nissan is crap.
    C: Well fuck you, I like it. And anyway, I never had that problem of other roads.
    D: It probably can't handle the road properly. You should get a Toyota.
    C: Dude, it can climb fucking mountains! How could it not handle a road?
    D: There's your problem! It's built for going uphill. Going uphill is doing it wrong!
    C: :facepunch:

    C: Fucking hell.
    D: What is it now?
    C: I'm freaking lost. There was this diner at the side of the road and I can't find it now.
    D: Where did you look?
    C: Next to the 1-mile mark.
    D: Oh... yeah, all mile markers say 1 now.
    C: What the... TDEMSYR!
    D: Have you tried the map?
    C: Yeah. I tried looking for a diner, but all I found was 7 gas stations and a motel. Then I tried looking for it by the name but it wasn't on there.
    D: Then it probably sucked anyway. The map is trying to help you.
    C: I don't want help! I want to find that fucking diner!
    ...
    D: Here, found it for you. Happy?
    C: The fuck? Why is it across the state line?
    D: Oh, I moved it. It clashed with the scenery.



  • @Arantor said:

    Jeff, Swampy, me, who else?

    Sorry @Arantor, looks like you're out of the running.



  • @Arantor said:

    Idiocy is relative. One cannot fault someone who does not know they fail.

    If you acknowledge your idiocy, that makes you more intelligent than the one who is an idiot and insists he is right.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @abarker said:

    If you acknowledge your idiocy, that makes you more intelligent than the one who is an idiot and insists he is right.

    QFT

    +1

    etc.



  • @abarker said:

    If you acknowledge your idiocy, that makes you more intelligent than the one who is an idiot and insists he is right.

    Especially if he continues to insist he is right in the face of evidence to the contrary.


  • BINNED

    @abarker said:

    Especially if he continues to insist he is right in the face of evidence to the contrary.

    Worst case, he might carry around a book he wrote and shove it in your face to prove he's right.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Onyx said:

    Worst case, he might carry around a book he wrote and shove it in your face to prove he's right.

    Wait, are you talking about <a @codingwhorrors or the apostles?


  • BINNED

    @darkmatter said:

    Wait, are you talking about @codingwhorror or the apostles?

    I'm not sure there's a difference. Didn't he himself compare Discourse to religion at one point?

    The only difference is... oh shit, there's not 12 of him, is there?



  • Can we nail him to a cross just in case?



  • What if you acknowledge your idiocy but fail to even attempt to do anything about it convinced that you're forever doomed to idiocy?

    But yes, you're all correct, even with my level of idiocy, I will never achieve the asymptotic level of Jeffcy as he gets older.



  • @Arantor said:

    What if you acknowledge your idiocy but fail to even attempt to do anything about it convinced that you're forever doomed to idiocy?

    But yes, you're all correct, even with my level of idiocy, I will never achieve the asymptotic level of Jeffcy as he gets older.

    I think that's a mid-level. Here's the way I see it:

    • Junior Idiot - The junior idiot is willing to admit to their idiocy when confronted with facts. On occasion, the junior idiot will even work to correct their errors. Thus, educating a junior idiot may result in fixing existing problems and preventing future ones.
    • Standard Idiot - Like the junior idiot, the standard idiot will admit their idiocy when confronted with facts, though this may not always happen. However, the standard idiot believes that there is no point correcting a mistake already made, so educating a standard idiot is done to prevent future problems.
    • Senior Idiot (aka The Atwood) - A senior idiot will never acknowledge their mistakes, no matter how many pesky facts are presented to them. The proper way to deal with a senior idiot is to put them in a position where they can do no harm.


  • I don't fit any of those categories since I'm self-admitting idiocy even before facts are presented, on the assumption that it's my fault before starting off.

    But otherwise yes I'd agree that those definitions hold up and I'm pleased to see the scale runs from 1 to Atwood.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Arantor said:

    I don't fit any of those categories since I'm self-admitting idiocy even before facts are presented, on the assumption that it's my fault before starting off.

    That just makes you sound like you're married.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @darkmatter said:

    That just makes you sound like you're married.

    My thoughts also.


Log in to reply