Computer Science quotes, 2005

"Can't you just wait a bit until half of CS2 stops turning up?"
"*mumble* That's not going to happen."
"Optimistic."

Q. Monsieur Capcarrere, I would like to congratulate you on your
   excellent first assessment which appears to have as its aim not only
   to increase our understanding of the Sun Java interpreted
   programming language, but also of the academic English
   oft-misinterpreted natural language. I must salute your use of the
   unfortunately uncommon word Prolegomena, which I must admit I had to
   resort to my dictionary in order to glean the full meaning of its
   definition. My erstwhile mastery of Ancient Greek is now worn and
   decrepit, much like the man who taught it me.

   I am indebted to you also for the introduction of the word
   "pettifogging" back into the modern vernacular, given that 16th
   Century English is slowly but surely becoming increasingly unpopular
   and even scorned. Philologists everywhere must swoon in your obvious
   adoration of all idioms outré.

   I entreat you in the name of all the budding linguists taking CO320
   to ensure that your sesquipedalianism continues unfettered by any
   concerns you may have over our grasp of the common tongue. You can
   always feel free to point perplexed abecedarians to the outstanding
   resource that is dictionary.com.

   Yours Verbosely, "Roget"
A. ... and so much got lost in translation :-)

If you've done programming before, you'll probably find this boring. If
you've never done programming before, well, you'll probably still find
it boring.

Can you turn round so I can ask an anonymous question, please?

WELCOME TO CORNWALLIS ZORK 0.42

You enter the CS building near the vending machines, go up the stairs,
go through the set of doors at the top of those stairs, take a left, and
go through three more sets of doors. You are standing in a hallway.

 From this hallway, you can either go STRAIGHT or LEFT.

 > STRAIGHT

You are eaten by a grue.

You scored 0 out of a possible 137 points.

Play again?

"What if the mark is 10?"
"Hm, yes, they pass with flying colours. Maybe there should have been a
greater than or equal to."
[...]
"What's 'i'?"
"That's what happens when you try to change the variable names to
something meaningful just before the lecture."
[...]
"while (count <= count). This is an example of an infinite while loop,
just to prove they can be done."
[...]
"Is it really document.writln, or should it be writeln?"
"Ah, that's a method I wrote. Trash my lecture, see if I care!"

Q: Having read the description, am somewhat confused. Any tips?
A: Be less confused?

Q: I am using BlueJ to write my code ...
A: Don't

While in Nature, all the evidence points out to Evolution as the only
scientifically valid theory, in coursework, I am a firm believer in
Intelligent Design.

Today at 1pm in S110B Axel will tell us about recent developments within
gtk2hs, the GUI-library for Haskell. He will show us how to write a
clone of netscape in 5 minutes and how to solve NP-complete problems in
linear time using lazy evaluation. I'm sure you want to see this.

"It says this module is higher-level. What does that mean?"
"(thinks) I'll talk faster, and leave more gaps."

Q. Why does CO321 suck so much?
A. While CO321 falls well outside my responsabilities, my duty as a
   responsible teacher is to try my best to clench my student's thirst
   for knowledge. So first, let's try to clarify the meaning of the
   question.  English being a secondary language to me, I would not want
   to misinterpret your query. Let's see...

   *to suck:*
   *v.* *intr.*

     1. To draw something in by or as if by suction: felt the drain
        starting to suck.
     2. To draw nourishment; suckle.
     3. To make a sound caused by suction.
     4. *Vulgar Slang.* To be disgustingly disagreeable or offensive.

   Hum... So the question is one of those, or a combination:

     1. Why does CO321 draw something in by or as if by suction so much?
     2. Why does CO321 draw nourishment so much?
     3. Why does CO321 make a sound caused by suction so much?
     4. Or, daring to think that you went to the extreme of using vulgar
        slang, Why is CO321 so disgustingly disagreeable?

   We can only answer to 1, if we know what the 'something' is... Ah
   ah, but from 2, we can safely deduce that it must be nourishment.
   The answer to 3 is now easy: if CO321 draw nourichment in by or as
   if by suction so much, then obviously that must cause a terrible
   suction sound. And then answer to 4 is positively obvious: Anything
   drawing in noisily nourishment in large quantity (deduced from the
   'so much') by, or as if by, suction, is most certainly disgusting.
   Just imagine the scene, a giant CO321 sucking in large quantities of
   spaghetti in tomato sauce...  revolting. So the only 2 questions
   left are why CO321 would do this? and what 'nourishment' does it
   exactly suck? Answer to these would certainly need a coursologist
   with great knowledge of the CO321 habits, who, unfortunately, I am
   not.

Q. [...] But the arraylist it returns INSISTS on having 10 spaces,
   unless the value of numCard is greater than 10, then it will put an
   extra 5 spaces on the end.. Can I just submit a peice of paper with
   my tears of frustration and hope for the best?
A. Maybe you can try to submit the torn, wet piece of paper to the
   Turner prize next year, with a title like "sufferings at the hand of
   a pervert frenchman"...

Q. Do you like being pedantic about bugs/syntax errors? Theres an extra
   semicolon on like 167 *hehe*
A. what? What! Where?... Pfff, Honour is safe. This is in David's code.

Here, of course you are killing your stack. You call yourself (i.e.
toString), but there is no stopping criteria, hence toString calls
toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring
which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which
calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls
toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring
which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which
calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls
toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring
which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which
calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring which calls
toSTring which calls toSTring which calls toSTring [...] WHICH LEADS TO
A stack overflow... 

Harder doesn't mean hard. Your mattress is a lot harder than melted
chocolate.

Q. Should our version and author say the same as on your interfaces?
A. No. Unless you are called Mathieu Capcarrere and you wrote your code
   on the 30th of November.

Q. sry to tell u this but this coursework is so badly phrased its
   shameful, you should really try to take more time in writing up the
   courseworks because u save us time in trying to understand it, its
   just a tip no offense meant.
A. Sorry to tell you but this question is so badly phrased, it's
   shameful. You should really try to take more time in writing up your
   queries as it would save me time in trying to understnad them. It's
   just a tip, no offence meant ;-).

Q. When is coursework 4 coming out? I stayed up 'til past midnight
   waiting for it like a child before christmas. But Father Capcarrere
   didn't deliver :'( Was I a bad person?
A. Did you never learn that if you stay up, Father Capcarrere does not
   come. You must sleep tight for your present to be delivered.
Q. when will coursework 4 be online and 1 random question: ¿whats
   harder, C programming or Java ?
A. I think Java is easier as you don't need to take care of the pointers
   and memory allocation (which can be quite nasty). [...]
Q. Hi there.. i am just wondering when will the last and final
   coursework will be out..??
A. It is now finally.
Q. when is coursework 4 going to come online... [...]
A. God, I feel like a zoo keeper surrounded by animals waiting for their
   food.
Q. Whens the next assignment up?
A. Ok ok I got the message

Q. (from question 302) am i correct in thinking I should use .length ?
A. You are always correct in thinking. Thinking is always a good thing.
   Being naturally good, I will let you think even a bit more and find
   out by yourself whether you were correct or not.

Q. Can you please please please say 'Hello, my name is Harry Henderson
   and i wholly hate having to go to harry's house' in a lecture ?
A. Euh... no.

Q. What is an argument?
A. This is not funny.

Q. cheers for the lectures! You've actually made me enjoy going to such
   things, at least for a limited time, i hope you have a great time in
   Swissland and maybe you can send us back some chocolate. [...]
A. (Don't repeat it too loudly or I risk losing my Swiss working permit,
   but I think Belgian chocolates are much better)

"OK, can anyone tell me who the person on the left is?
[long pause]
Very, very famous person.
[more awkward silence]
Somebody must know who this guy is!"
"That climber guy?"

You can find some very, very weird people on Linux newsgroups.

Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the textbook with me at home.

Q. Do you miss us?
A. The sense of loss is terrible and I can often be seen at night erring
   on campus, howling to the moon. Thank god, I am knee-deep in your
   coursework#4 scripts and these frail souvenirs are just enough to
   keep me going.

And so the original peer notifies the index server that it has a copy of
the file, and everyone's happy. Except, um, EMI.

So, you see: you pay, and you get the music, or you don't pay, and you
still get the music.

Q. Hello, in the idl file provided, what do you mean by "Implement your
   own TicketAgent service (and Ticket generator)"? Does it mean we have
   to implement a TicketAgent service and a Ticket generator?
A. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

At the risk of sounding childish, we were here first.

If you can't shoot yourself in the foot, then you can't shoot the person
trying to assassinate you.

"Where does the University use clustering?"
"In Parkwood?"
"No, that's ghettoisation."

There are four groups of people in the world. There are people who can
program and love it -- most of the people in this room.  There are
people who can program and hate it: they write UML and call themselves
software engineers. There are people who can't program and don't care:
they're artists. There are people who can't program and hate us for it:
they are set above us as managers.

You are now sufficiently humiliated to hear John Lennon on the subject,
from his great period circa 1973. [plays music]

"It's in the syllabus."
"The *word* is in the syllabus, yes."

If the crammers can beat this test, then I will come to Kent and I will
eat your hat.

Word is what we call in America a target-rich environment. It's like
shooting goldfish in a pond.

My error message would be "Use Excel, you moron".

I lie about what I do. I tell them I'm a pro surfer. I don't have to fix
their computer that way.

... and this is only possible at a university, where we have vast
amounts of slave-- student labour.

In America, we have these things that outnumber people 100-to-1. They're
called lawyers.

See, as a researcher, I appreciate it when they leave problems like this
for me to solve.

Parallel processing is a character-building experience.

To compute that shadow there takes -- well, this is a painting, but...

We got the archaeologists to make authentic candles. So this is half a
cow, melted down for two weeks.

We want them to say "wow, nice frescoes", but not say "wow, nice
frescoes" and then fall over the lamp.

Because this is Canterbury, we *have* to have commstime.

It always says it's deadlock-free. That's not a very powerful result.

And this is the Jadud Constant of Infinite Goodness. [plays thunderclap
effect]

I'm sure you've all heard of Globus and gLite, two projects that *claim*
to work.

"So if you can model this in CSP, why's it occam-*pi*? What's pi about
it?"
"Why's your library called Communicating *Threads*?"

"Can you generate CSP for this?"
"Fred, can you generate CSP for this?"
"Yes, should be able to."
"There is *absolutely no reason* why we cannot generate CSP for this."

So he has a Marvellous Proof...

Everything they say about 9AM seminars is true.

Preparing for the world cup, the England team has identified their major
threat to success in the group stages: Trinidad & Tobago. Rumour has it
that the sinister Trinidadians might plan a variety of measures to swing
success in their favour:
* serve the English team with a particularly strong pineapple &
  chutney sauce at a shared pre-match dinner, something only true
  Tobagons can stomach;
* steal the original puppet of the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show
  and use it for Voodoo rituals to affect Sven's tactical judgement;
* infiltrate the stadium staff of Nuremberg's Franken Stadium and
  turn up the stadium heating during the match to create Caribbean
  temperatures.
[...]
Using truth tables, determine who is the double agent and what the exact
plans of Trinidad & Tobago are.

Have you guys ever heard of SOAP?

Q. This is not an easy essay to write. I sort of understand the subject
   to me a little of how we interpret it as opposed to fact. Would i be
   right in saying this?
A. It's hard to tell.

eg, there seem to be several related frogs:-)
  A REAR LECTERN FROG
  A TERRAN CREEL FROG
other little-known beings
  A TERRAN GROCER ELF
  GALA CORNER FERRET
plants
  A GNARL FORCER TREE
and tools
  A RARE CRT FREON GEL
if you're looking for funding,
  A GRANT FORCER REEL
might come in handy. btw, even in the
  CLEARER TERRAN FOG
you'd better not leave the
  ERLANG CAREER FORT
to extend a
  FORTRAN CAREER LEG
even if your
  CAREER GRANTOR ELF
should recommend it - you need to be a
  CATERER FOR ERLANG
only, unless you want to
  FACE ERLANG TERROR
but if you're good, you could become
  REFRACTOR GENERAL
can there be a
  GREATER CONFERRAL
?

You've probably got more memory in your little finger than this thing
has.