The Nerd Pride Thread....

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I have programmed about ten different high level languages. Forth and APL are the only two I found that needed a paradigm-shift in thinking to get "into the groove" with.
I suppose it was inevitable that APL would pop up in this thread.

My roommate and I used to compete for shortest/most obscure/most hideously resource-consuming solutions to our APL problem sets. You could write a lovely little one liner that in the middle created, transposed, and otherwise mangled and eventually destroyed six-dimensional arrays to arrive at an answer that was a single number. But hey, 20 characters! Fortunately we were not graded on efficiency.

It's a ridiculous language but man oh man it was *fun* and mind-expanding, and that's really the value of learning a bunch of different programming languages in the first place.
 
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Suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity. This is what it thought, as it fell:

"Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Okay okay, calm down calm down get a grip now. Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it? Its a sort of tingling in my... well I suppose I better start finding names for things. Lets call it a... tail! Yeah! Tail! And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do. Yeah, this is really exciting. I'm dizzy with anticipation! Or is it the wind? There's an awful lot of that now isn't it? And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me? Hello, Ground!"​
Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, "Oh no, not again!" Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly *why* the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.​
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I suppose it was inevitable that APL would pop up in this thread.

My roommate and I used to compete for shortest/most obscure/most hideously resource-consuming solutions to our APL problem sets. You could write a lovely little one liner that in the middle created, transposed, and otherwise mangled and eventually destroyed six-dimensional arrays to arrive at an answer that was a single number. But hey, 20 characters! Fortunately we were not graded on efficiency.

It's a ridiculous language but man oh man it was *fun* and mind-expanding, and that's really the value of learning a bunch of different programming languages in the first place.
Ah, if only there were a "regular" language with innate support for matrices like that. Oh, wait, there is. M-files that go with Matlab. Done a few of those back in college too.
 
WRT Hitchhiker's Trilogy

I drove people nuts at work. They would foolishly come up to me a say "I have a Question", at which point I would immediately reply "42". I sometimes followed up with "Do you have the right question?"

But after 42 years, 42 weeks, and 42 days I retired............
Oh, so sad the legacy can no longer be perpetuated. They lose. I actually used that exact response last week at work and got the RCA dog look! I cry every day about the bell curve.
 
Did you go to school to be evil, or is it a natural talent? Expiring minds need to know...
K'Tesh musta been in the same dorm.
I went to OIT (Klamath Falls), SOSC (now SOU), and Portland State... I've lived in exactly zero dorms. Now my barracks in the USAF were another thing...
 
Me with my 1972 Vega. I painted "Lynyrd Skynyrd" on the Confederate flag.
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Me in my '70 Pinto. It fooled a lot of people. I suckered in several Vettes in gymkhana-type races. It had a bunch of power* and light weight.

*2 liter OHC bluprinted short block with ported/polished head and stupid lumpy TRW cam, headers electronic ignition, other stuff. The '70 motor was higher compression than the following years. It would easily rev to 6000 rpm, but if I took it to 8000, I had to re-set the valves. This motor had *tons* more potential for power than the 2.3 L, but since the cam came out the back of the head, you had to pull the head to swap it: 2.3L came out the front

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Me in my '70 Pinto. It fooled a lot of people. I suckered in several Vettes in gymkhana-type races. It had a bunch of power* and light weight.

*2 liter OHC bluprinted short block with ported/polished head and stupid lumpy TRW cam, headers electronic ignition, other stuff. The '70 motor was higher compression than the following years. It would easily rev to 6000 rpm, but if I took it to 8000, I had to re-set the valves. This motor had *tons* more potential for power than the 2.3 L, but since the cam came out the back of the head, you had to pull the head to swap it: 2.3L came out the front

View attachment 529366.
I like those wheels! I had a C.B. radio too.
 
I still have 2 slide rules; unless you count the round one in the Effects of nuclear weapons book.
I use a TI85 for most stuff, and if I need more power than that, Mathcad.
 
They're beginning to show up... I've got two on order (wish I would have ordered a 3rd).

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