After looking this up, TIL that Knuckles is an echidna. I had no idea!
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/N/nybble.html
Worth noting that at the time of documentation a half-byte was a nybble, and the more mundane spelling came along later
edit: ooooo I just remembered the Cox-Zucker algorithm too! Evidently the two guys behind the algo only decided to work together because of their last names.
I’ve learnt about byte/nibble over 30 years ago and just now got the pun.
It’s a nybble…
Been in a lab meeting (biochemists) with a group who were naming a new method they made. They started with the acronym and decided what it would stand for second.
People are really awful at naming things.
Some German nerd thought it was cool while they discovered some new receptor so they called it “toll” (German for cool/awesome). Computer science is full of names that are kind of funny if you already know the particular area but are total gibberish if you’re trying learn it. We’re not even good at naming humans. The default is to either pick one of the names that’s common in your culture. When people deviate from that you get a huge number of “special” names.
We need to put this in the hands of experts. I’m gonna propose a new field, “nameology”. Those folks will do a bunch of research into names that make sense. How do we best name things so they completely and unambiguously label them in a way that’s easy to remember and use? Then they can run around and give non stupid names to all the things.
17, 18, and 19 on the periodic table spell out ClArK, guess what’s below 18. Krypton. I can’t remember which one came first, but superman is baked into the periodic table and I can’t help but remember that everytime I think about chemistry.
C++ is just the next iteration of C. C# is just another layer of iteration on top of C++. Flags are simple indicators for programs, usually set by a controlling human/system, semaphores are flags that communicate between processes.
C++ is just the next iteration of C.
This is somewhat clever when you know that the ‘++’ operator is the post-increment operator in C.
C# is just another layer of iteration on top of C++.
…except there is no ‘#’ operator in C or C++, so any interesting self-referential pattern breaks down here. The ‘#’ comes from musical notation, where a ‘#’ (sharp) note is played a semitone higher — and was chosen more for marketing purposes rather than scientists having an inside joke.
You could have also mentioned ‘D’, which is another “next iteration of C” independent of C++.
The C programming language also descends from the B programming language (though B’s lineage unfortunately goes to BCPL, not A)
pretty sure there’s a D language, and i know there’s R but that’s not super related, obviously.
i’m just waiting for the ø programming language
R is a wonderful programming language in the eyes of people who are bad at programming. And that’s not disparaging it, it’s just used by scientists and engineers more than programmers because nothing makes an anova take less work
