When a Standard Null Isn't Good Enough


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I just finished upgrading my laptop to Windows 10. When I originally got the thing, the OEM graphics drivers it came with it crashed frequently when running OpenGL games such as Minecraft. For the longest time, the only way to fix that was to use patched drivers made by a third party. The first thing I did after disabling all of the "send Microsoft all my personal data" settings was to run Minecraft to test the reliability of the Windows Update graphics drivers. Everything ran great!

    Well, almost everything.



  • That's a pretty good null, but I prefer mine to be Master null of Important nulls TO THE MAX.



  • That null doesn't look very high-def to me.

    It looks like a Super Nintendo null that's been scaled up with a smoothing algorithm.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @blakeyrat said:

    That null doesn't look very high-def to me.

    It looks like a Super Nintendo null that's been scaled up with a smoothing algorithm.

    Which is a round about way of saying

    @Placeholder said:

    Minecraft



  • Is an Ultra nullTM greater or less than a common null?

    Or is it just more null than null, but otherwise considered equal?


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    An ultra null is a bit better than a great null at catching bugs. You had a master null at one point but you used it on a weaker bug because your boss wanted it captured right this instant and couldn't wait for you to go about catching the bug the right way! His customers won't be happy until your taxonomy is complete.

    One day, you had a random encounter with a legendary bug. The scourge of the land, it struck seemingly at random and nobody could track it down. You tested it rigorously until almost no code was left untested. You froze it with a debugger. To no avail. Every time you chucked an ultra null at it, you watched hopefully, waiting for it to submit to your iron will. Every time, it evaded your watch at the last possible second. You throw your last null in a desperate attempt to end this once and for all.

    Twitch...

    Twitch...

    Twitch...

    Then your boss pulls you out of the fight, nukes the planet from orbit, and orders you to start building a new world from scratch.



  • I remember. That must have been the bug that constantly threw a MasterNullPointerException. And with an instance of the class ultraNull, the entire universe brick-walled with an UltraNullPointerBigCrunch.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PWolff said:

    Is an Ultra nullTM greater or less than a common null?

    Or is it just more null than null, but otherwise considered equal?

    Remember kids, all nulls are born unequal!


  • BINNED

    @DoctorJones said:

    all nulls are born unequal!

    but they die as a null too ...

    Unless they are aborted then they return NULL_NOT_FOUND


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Profound.



  • You should try using the developer's null for easy debugging. You'll find it under /dev/null .



  • If you're not mashing up and b while debugging, you're doing it wrong.



  • @Placeholder said:

    One day, you had a random encounter with a legendary bug. The scourge of the land, it struck seemingly at random and nobody could track it down. You tested it rigorously until almost no code was left untested. You froze it with a debugger. To no avail. Every time you chucked an ultra null at it, you watched hopefully, waiting for it to submit to your iron will. Every time, it evaded your watch at the last possible second. You throw your last null in a desperate attempt to end this once and for all.

    Twitch...

    Twitch...

    Twitch...

    Then your boss pulls you out of the fight, nukes the planet from orbit, and orders you to start building a new world from scratch.

    I have NEVER met a good programmer who COULDN'T describe what they do, like this. We all seem to be able to do this sort of thing. And the bad ones pretty much always cannot express themselves with this kind of humor. Spooky.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said:

    You should try using the developer's null for easy debugging. You'll find it under /dev/null

    Just so you know, I am TOTALLY stealing this! Thanks 😃 [yoink]



  • inb4 PHP functions is_null() and is_real_null()



  • Don't forgot mysql_real_is_null and mysql_real_is_real_null as well.



  • @powerlord said:

    mysql_real_is_real_null

    mysql‍i‍_real_is_real_null



  • What about Null Quicksilver, Null Black, and Null Sapphire?



  • One of them is the Iblis trigger, but it just triggers a NullPointerException.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I just use Oracle style nulls.



  • @hungrier said:

    Iblis trigger,

    ugh.



  • @Vaire said:

    I have NEVER met a good programmer who COULDN'T describe what they do, like this. We all seem to be able to do this sort of thing.

    Mine always comes out Lovecraftian. :( Recently I actually started reading H. P. Lovecraft, now it's Ultra-Lovecraftian.

    For example, I was recently being informed by the project manager that we had started a new project, with instructions on how to set up the project (install this, install that, use docker). It was going so smoothly, that the last sentence in the email caught me off guard:

    I know it seems a bit unreasonable but we are targeting completion by the end of this week. I've had no visibility of this project until now...

    Seasoned as my nerves were, I instinctively suppressed my terror while I questioned a colleague, who assured me no such deadline would be enforced, based on her experience.

    When I had the chance I questioned the project manager, explaining the physical impossibility. Something in his response shook me to the core when he faced me and replied:

    Boss +1 decided it. I think he's gone mad.

    I steeled myself against the haunted look in his eyes. I protested that the technical debt would make the website yet harder to maintain, that the product would not be. His next assertion would appear in my nightmares...

    That's how we do things.

    Infectious was his haunting, as those were not his words. That was not his voice.

    My fear begat anger at the ridiculousness of the statement. I was ready to explain that this needed to change quickly, but instead of forming the unrelenting stance, I heard my voice turn to laughter.

    I wanted to grab the people around me and demand to know from them how they couldn't see how ridiculous the situation was, but in reality I only continued to laugh from my chair.

    Eventually I must have gathered my wits and engaged some survival instinct, for I found myself out of the code. The repository deleted from my computer, the terminal cleared. Indications of its existence all but obliterated. Afterwards I would have wondered if I had dreamt the ordeal but for the whispers I heard of the Daemon Drive.

    So, yeah, pretty run-of-the-mill WTF. I'm working on my Lovecraftian still.



  • I dunno, an empty string seems like a bad NULL.

    Then again, C++ uses the value 0, so...


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