Happy as a Pig in Sh*t

Anyone feel the same way when doing those parts of computing that are as easy as clubbing baby seals?

I've done the *$%%!! class diagrams etc for Assignment 1, and now we have a HELLO WORLD!

So I can play! How can I make a Hello World break? Fiddle fiddle. Tinker tinker. Whistle whistle.

Success! It's broken! Curse curse curse. ... Ah!... as soon as the sense of humour failure has passed small luminous objects that shouldn't really be dignified with the name "lights" go on inside the Machine in the Thick Bone Casing. Fix fix, whistle whistle ... er ... I wonder what would happen if I pushed that big red button that says "Don't Push"...

Sometimes it all seems worthwhile. For its own sake. For no other reason.

Eddy, you know you sound cool mate.

One thing though, sometimes you make no sense. Do you type as you think and just post it all?

Thanks, Kyle.

I type in great haste. That means I fail to achieve speed. Sometimes fragments that make sense to me come spitting out of the keyboard. Unfortunately they have no {subject, verb, object} order, for one thing...

Interpretation of above rant: Last question in Assignment 1 is a little applet. It's near as dammit to being a "Hello World" program. Nice and easy, on the one hand, but not so interesting, on the other. So I fiddle around with the parameters of the functions of the example program to try and find out what they all mean. I try to "break" the applet, in that sense. If it breaks, it gets a bit more interesting.

Now the ironic thing in the computer world, is that when things get interesting, they also get hugely frustrating. So immediately following that little satisfaction that comes from making something that was working perfectly well break, comes "curse, curse, curse".

But of course it's only thereafter that things start to disintegrate, from the point of view of making sense.

"Sense of Humour Failure". A term I learnt from a friend of mine years ago. You don't "lose your temper"; what actually happens is your sense of humour lets you down. It ceases to function as it should. You have a sense of humour failure. That's a more accurate way of saying someone lost his temper. (All of which you'd have to have known my friend from years ago to get).

The sense of humour failure passes, and then little lights go on in the brain cavity. Dim little lights, but they're lights, which is a whole lot better than the darkness that preceded them. I was just trying to be Poetic. It didn't work.

Right, and then after that you've just got someone muttering to self - a monologue, which ends in the kind of thought I imagine someone somewhere in some nuclear warfare command bunker having one day. Picture the janitor mopping away, happy as can be, but inquisitive about things one should not be inquisitive about. Whistle whistle. Mop mop. .... Hmmm .... interesting .... big red button ... much more interesting than all the other little buttons here .... I wonder what would happen if I pushed it.

On a smaller scale, I go mopping the floors of java programming, merrily merrily, making some little applet work, and then I see some numbers that go in that function over there, and I think "I wonder what would happen if I turned that 10 into a 1000?" ... Prelude to a tiny disaster..

Oh shit, this makes even less sense than what I originally fired off ....

Well, I understand it like this:
Assignment 1 is easy (at least for double d over there). The last question is just not challenging enough for our man so he plays around until its so broken, it's challenging to fix.

Right?

I did find it easy as well. It does help to have some related experience, I must confess.

Cobus Neethling

What they tend to do is give us an easy start, partly to get us going with a bit of confidence, and partly to make rude signs at the Dept of Education for dictating how and when assignments should be scheduled etc.

We'll all find that question easy. No question about it, so the easiness of the question wasn't originally the big issue. Really the issue was just to say "I'm happy now" really, really happy. Stupidly happy, even. Because I'm tinkering, coding, trying to make something definite work or to see how something works.

I suppose I should add that before I went and played baby code, I was trying to figure out how you make a rule for the sequence 5, 6, 10, 12, ..., 500, 600. And it wasn't working. I was frustrated. (I'm on the trail of the answer now, I think, so please don't anyone tell me what it its). Then I went and wrote some code within my personal present limits. And I thought to myself, "Man, I like doing this!" ... and so on ...

Writing programs can be a desperate war of attrition for someone at any level, given an intractible enough problem. At times like that, I, for one loathe, hate, detest my computer (and anything else that's to blame for my not getting to the bottom of the problem). But give me a tractible problem. Make it just, but only just, challenging. ... Happiness, man! Sheer delight! You follow that known recipe, or implement that known pattern, and you get instant gratification. Push a button, and the machine does something. It's like shaking a rattle or racing around in a walker!

Aish, slow down brother slow eddy. it makes no sense at all reading your posts. hmmm.

Kawabunga.. o.o

java java java

Brilliant, Randal! Now I can try to go into the "violently happy zone", where one is happy and don't anyone dare suggest that this is not a happy scowl!

Translation: More books, means more depth. More depth means more intractable problems when you get stuck. Intractable problems produce violent behaviour, which prompts those around you to say "Hey man, take it easy, get a life, cheer up, etc"

"I AM HAPPY YOU ##%%@@@ !!!!" , you retaliate... but no-one seems to believe you ...

Thanks man, that looks like a really good resource.

everybody. here's the thing.
I do not have the prescribed book for this module (for a number of reasons; registered late, zimbabwe postal services took forever, etc...). So I didnt do assignment 1 coz didnt even know about it. now assignment 2 is due but my books still haven't arrived. All assignments say "Do Exercise so and so on page xxx of Jia."

I dont have JIA, so somebody please, please send me the questions for assignment 2. scan the pages or something. take a photo with your phone. I have 2 days to go and I need this to be admitted into the exam!