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Software Programming Idle Technology

Happy Programmer Day! 97

Posted by samzenpus from the kiss-a-coder dept.
netbuzz writes "As made-up holidays go, today's event – Programmer Day – doesn't get the attention or respect of, say, SysAdmin Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day. (One exception appears to be Russia, where 'Programmers' Day' has been 'officially recognized' since 2009.) Yet programmers and their fans are taking to public forums, if not in droves at least in growing groups, to give coders their due respect."
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Happy Programmer Day! More

Happy Programmer Day!

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  • Don't feed the code monkeys!

  • Coders, you can expect reciprocation on how much respect you paid your sysadmin on sysadmin day.

  • ...a computer programmer [mcsweeneys.net]...

    Your job became taking young programmers who love what they do and extracting their souls, motivating them to follow the same path you did.

    • The things they did do, they did wrong. They found bugs. They found ways to circumvent all of your carefully constructed system rules and validations. Not because they were master hackers or brilliant technicians...but because they were just stupid. They clicked on things they shouldn't click on. They typed things in that they shouldn't type in. They didn't read simple instructions. They didn't listen in training. They were personally insulting you by being terrible at using your software.

      In a field labeled

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        Yep, that's a great example of a crappy programmer who should be eligible for any number of jobs in the food service or housekeeping industries.

        Almost every time I hear a programmer complain about the users, it's really the programmers fault the users are doing it.

    • Yikes. I hope that guy is happier being not a programmer.

      Me? I love it. And when people figure out ways to do things wrong, I don't get mad, I figure out ways to make those wrong ways right. That's the point of programming! The only thing more rewarding than making stupid people capable, is making smart people more capable, and they're both hard. You want to be a programmer, but only do things that are easy? Hah! If it were easy, I'd just build a program to do it.

  • Shouldn't it be "255" and not "265"?

    • Shouldn't it be "255" and not "265"?

      Sorry, they had to ship the article before it passed QA. We have created a support ticket and are working on a patch to resolve the problem.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mister Fright ( 1559681 )

      According to this guy [programmerday.info], it's 256th in our calendar because we're starting at an index of one. If we start at a zero index, it would be 255. Careful with that off-by-one error.

      • So what happens on leap years - do we go back in time a day?

        Besides, everyone knows that Programmers Day is also April Fools Day ("You really believed we wouldn't change the specs AGAIN? Fooled ya!")

      • The number 255 is still the 256th number if you start at 0 - makes no difference.

        Leap years raise a good question...we should have it a day earlier on leap years. :-)

        • Yeah, I worded that not the best. Meant the same thing, numbered 255 if zero index which is still 256th number.

          Yup, that's how it is. Sept 12th on a leap year. Kind of like those holidays that are "second Monday of this month" kind of thing. The exact date doesn't matter. Just happens to be Sept 13 this year.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Zeros ( 1016135 )
      What day is 0000 0000 hint its the first day.

    • Shouldn't it be "255" and not "265"?

      Kids today have no respect for binary. Back in the day, we had to code in hexadecimal ... in 6 feet of snow! Uphill!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Wattos ( 2268108 )

      Shouldn't it be "255" and not "265"?

      It is 256 distinct values and not the highest number. The highest number depends on the interpretation (e.g. it is 127 in two's compliment).

    • FTFA: "Programmer Day has been celebrated on the 265th day of the year since" .. that's a typo.. 256 is correct of course, as explained by other comments.
      • I thought the conflicting specifications was intentional irony.

        Programmer Day should be on a different day every year. And the day shouldn't be announced until it's already passed.
        • That's a downer. Maybe Programmer Day should be decided by two unsynchronized threads, and the date isn't final until they deadlock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )

      ...
      An off-by-one index had done it again.

  • Specialty Days Are Annoying. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm a programmer and sysadmin* and I still think appreciation days and the people who insist on creating them are annoying and self-serving.

    *see what I did there? I told you I was someone who would conceivably benefit from appreciation days, and by distancing myself from them, have shown you that my opinion is untainted by self-interest, therefore lending my opinion more weight. Knowing this now, mod up accordingly.

    • Arrrr... ye be a scurvy dog fer thinkin there need be less appreciation fer the land-lubbers who be keepin yer ships afloat!

    • As both, I also have to agree with you.

      None the less moving to russia, with the appreciation in an official holiday, and the hot russian chicks does appeal to me.

  • Due to a bug "Programmer Day" never got the appropriate attention.
  • Can't be much of a holiday with cake. :(

  • ITS A TRAP! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @01:47PM (#37389356)

    You start to read the summary, you feel appreciated. Things are going well.

    And then....

    where 'Programmers' Day' has been

    UNMATCHED QUOTES!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

    • where 'Programmers' Day' has been

      UNMATCHED QUOTES!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

      Just be glad they weren't using LISP (because the parens would drive you mad :) ).

  • I once remarked to my admin on "Admin Day" that to be fair, there should also be a "Programmer Day". Her response? "Honey, _every_ day is Programmer Day."

  • Programmer Day wasn't in the requirements. Show me the spec and I'll have it ready next Tuesday.

    • Programmer Day wasn't in the requirements. Show me the spec and I'll have it ready when its done.

      There, FTFY ;)

  • Don't taunt the code monkeys in forums or they may fling poo at you.

  • public class ProgrammerDay {
            public static void main(String[] args) {
                    System.out.println("Happy Programmer Day everyone!");
            }
    }

  • Duplicated day. (Score:3)

    by julesh ( 229690 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @02:32PM (#37390030)

    They should do their research before inventing things that duplicate things that already exist. Most professions have a day dedicated to them simply because most professions have a patron saint, and all saints have a day allocated to them by the Catholic church.

    In the case of programming, the relevant saint is Isidore of Seville [wikipedia.org], whose saint's day is 4th of April.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Yes, I wanted to be associated with an asshole who had the children of Jewish parent physicaly removed from their homes.

      Fuck you, and your crappy bastard of a saint.

  • I just enrolled for a Computer Science degree today.

  • Bob Ross - Happy little programmer painting class (Score:5, Funny)

    by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @03:14PM (#37390562)

    A little crimson white and just use the brush to paint in those Happy Little Programmers with white hats here and there. Just layer them for a nice contrast. You can also paint some Happy Little Programmers with black hats using midnight back for some real contrast.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ross [wikipedia.org]

  • wish I didn't know this, it's a sad sad day :/

  • Butterflies and all... real programmers hack every day to be a programmer day, it's not a day if it ain't hacked to be day of programmer.

  • From TFA "The number 256 was chosen because it is the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte-a number that is typically very well known to programmers...The number 256 was chosen because it is the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte-a number that is typically very well known to programmers."

    All you 2 bit programmers, get yer own day!!!

  • Less Deserved (Score:3, Insightful)

    by excelblue ( 739986 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @04:12PM (#37391228) Homepage

    Having been both a sysadmin and programmer, I have to honestly say that while sysadmin day is deserved, programming day isn't. There's just simply much more to sysadmins that are underappreciated when compared to programmers:

    * Sysadmins setup routine systems that are built by programmers (who usually get the credit).
    * Sysadmins only get (negative) attention when something goes awry.
    * There's usually no mention of sysadmins anywhere.
    * Unless you are very technical, you probably don't even know that sysadmins exist!

    In contrast, programmers have it nice in the sense that when they do a good job, they are seen as the heroes who created the system. People go to programmers for feature requests in addition to bug reports. Their names are usually listed in an about dialog or readme file somewhere. Also, unless you are completely technically illiterate, you know that someone has to create the software.

    The final bit: the infrastructure will crash and burn without sysadmins, but without programmers, it'll just cease to advance.

    Having a Programmer Day in addition to Sysadmin Day is like having an Executive Day in addition to Labor Day: unnecessary, unjustified. In both cases, the former already has the glory on a daily basis that the latter is hugely lacking.

    • mate I wanna know where you worked as a programmer if they got their glory on a daily basis...

      I'd say the 2 are more similar than they are different - and for the same reasons.

    • ... In contrast, programmers have it nice in the sense that when they do a good job ...

      See, that's where your argument loses all credibility.
      Everyone knows that programmers never do a good job!.

    • The final bit: the infrastructure will crash and burn without sysadmins, but without programmers, it'll just cease to advance.

      Sounds to me like your infrastructure is pretty bad if it needs your constant input to stop it failing.. If a programmer wrote software like that they would be out of a job very quickly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      sysadmins are just underachieving programmers.

  • Kinda funny that the Programmer Day FAQ [programmerday.info] lists Programmer's Day as Sept. 12th for leap years, but the countdown on the homepage [programmerday.info] fails to take this into account. You'd think the countdown value being greater than 365 days today would be a dead giveaway to their... programmers...

  • So should I really appreciate some noodle head's VB thing that instacrashes windows? Or what about a sandboxed scripting language that still allows full access to to the root system? What about that stock market thing where one "oops" in the chaos of a trading day caused a major panic?

    My point is it really should be called "Happy Competent Programmer Day!" or else we should be giving people pats on the back for writing gems like the Sony customer database interface.

    PS: I am no where near competent in progra

  • Each iteration of programer's day will get a little bigger, until it takes the whole year... then it will crash.

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