Too Many 'a's (A poem, with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Too Many 'a's (A poem, with apologies to Dr. Seuss)(gist.github.com)

18 points by svs 11 years ago | 22 comments

herghost 11 years ago |

"I changed it to male" - OMG YOU THINK WOMEN CAN'T CODE

"I changed it to female" - OMG YOU THINK WOMEN ARE BAD AT CODING

svs 11 years ago | |

Thanks for that. To all female programmers - I meant no offense.

On a related note, when are we getting genderless pronouns for English?

phorese 11 years ago | | |

------------------------------------------------------

  Did I ever tell you that Programmer McCave
  Had twenty-three variables and named them all `a`
   
  Well, the programmer did. And that wasn't a smart thing to do.
  You see, when the programmer wants to add `a` to 2
   
  The programmer doesn't get a number oh no no no
  All twenty-three `a`s cause a buffer overflow
   
  This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves'
  As you can imagine, with so many `a`s.
   
  And often the programmer wishes that, while coding,
  The programmer hadn't ignored that sense of foreboding
   
  And called one of them runCount, And one of them lastNum
  And one of them allSales and another roundSum
   
  And one of them lastId, and another userNames
  And one subnetMask, or numStartedGames
   
  Any old names would actually do
  even if they were just `bar` or `foo`
   
  And adding hyphens or humble underscores
  The programmer could have come up with so many more!
   
  Like read_app_config_from_this_file_name
  But no, the programmer went and called them all the same
   
  If only the programmer hadn't given into the hype
  And used a language strongly typed
   
  The programmer would have avoided this horrible fate
  But didn't and so now it's too late.

------------------------------------------------------

There, FTFY. People will still think the programmer is a male, but now it's their own damn bias at fault :)

thret 11 years ago | | |

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-she1.htm

'he' was already genderless. 'She' was introduced to signify female, and 'he' become masculine by comparison. Perhaps in introducing 'she' we should have introduced something like 'ghe' for male, then we could keep 'he' as undefined, and everyone would be happy.

herghost 11 years ago | | |

I wouldn't sweat it. Anyone offended at this needs to recalibrate their outrage-o-meter.

aagdbl 11 years ago | | |

"It"? For programmers you could also use "id".

philh 11 years ago | | |

> On a related note, when are we getting genderless pronouns for English?

When enough people start using them despite occasionally annoying other people. :)

(I'm a fan of ve/ver/vis for someone of unknown/nonbinary gender, but in a case like this I would have just picked he or she and to hell with anyone who complains.)

octo_t 11 years ago |

Really classy comment from mvasilkov there....

underyx 11 years ago | |

It was most likely a sarcastic stab at a complaint that the poem featured a female programmer in the role of 'bad coder'.

ashleyblackmore 11 years ago |

A "poem" with typos, a dearth of wit and worst of of all, questionable content: why is the terrible programmer a woman? A woman doesn't normally spring to mind when discussing programming, but oh, when we're discussing something where someone is missing a rudimentary, fundamental lack of understanding (all variables have the same name), a woman is chosen.

svs 11 years ago | |

I'm apologising, sincerely, to anyone who took offense to the fact that the programmer was a female. It wasn't my intention to cause hurt and I've updated the parody with a hopefully less controversial male protagonist. For context, the original poem has a female as the main character which is why the female sprung to mind in my poem.

As for the lack of wit, well, I'd suggest that's a more subjective thing....

herghost 11 years ago | |

possibly related to the source/inspiration that OP referenced in the link? http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171612

glomph 11 years ago | |

Wait so because women don't 'typically spring to mind' as programmers they should have changed it from the original?

ashleyblackmore 11 years ago | | |

I don't want to get into a flame war, but no, that isn't what I meant. In general, in the mainstream, people will typically think of men when they think of programmers. Something like 'Neckbeard Hacker' on twitter being just one obvious stereotype, however outmoded that particular one may be. I don't need to argue that point, but in light of it, it came across as a rather odd choice of protagonist, considering the normative view, and the subject being a 'bad programmer'.

I don't really think svs meant any offence, especially having now seen the original poem. I also don't think we can live in a society where everybody has perfectly-formed liberal views. At the same time, I'm not down with this "why are people so easily offended"/"turn down your offence-o-meter" argument that one hears when this comes up, mainly because it is a trivially easy card to play when you aren't the target of the stereotyping

underyx 11 years ago | |

I enjoyed it still.

Did I ever tell you that Programmer McCave Had twenty-three variables and named them all `a` Well, the programmer did. And that wasn't a smart thing to do. You see, when the programmer wants to add `a` to 2 The programmer doesn't get a number oh no no no All twenty-three `a`s cause a buffer overflow This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves' As you can imagine, with so many `a`s. And often the programmer wishes that, while coding, The programmer hadn't ignored that sense of foreboding And called one of them runCount, And one of them lastNum And one of them allSales and another roundSum And one of them lastId, and another userNames And one subnetMask, or numStartedGames Any old names would actually do even if they were just `bar` or `foo` And adding hyphens or humble underscores The programmer could have come up with so many more! Like read_app_config_from_this_file_name But no, the programmer went and called them all the same If only the programmer hadn't given into the hype And used a language strongly typed The programmer would have avoided this horrible fate But didn't and so now it's too late.