I take my shitposts very seriously.

  • 20 Posts
  • 1.48K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 24th, 2023

help-circle


  • It’s a convention set by early programming languages.

    In most C-like languages, if (a = b)... is also a valid comparison. The = (assignment) operation returns the assigned value as a result, which is then converted to a boolean value by the if expression. Consider this Javascript code:

    let a = b = 1
    
    1. It first declares the b variable and assigns it the value of the expression 1, which is one.
    2. It returns the result of the expression b = 1, which is the assigned value, which is 1.
    3. It declares the a variable and assigns the previously returned value, which is 1.

    Another example:

    let a = 1
    let b = 2
    let c = 3
    console.log(a == b) // prints "false" because the comparison is false
    console.log(a = b) // prints 2 because the expression returns the value of the assignment, which is 'b', which is 2
    
    // Using this in an 'if' statement:
    if (b = c) { // the result of the assignment is 3, which is converted to a boolean true
        console.log("what")
    }
    

    You can’t do the same in Python (it will fail with a syntax error), but it’s better to adhere to convention because it doesn’t hurt anyone, but going against it might confuse programmers who have greater experience with another language. Like I was when I switched from Pascal (which uses = for comparison and := for assignment) to C.






  • It makes sense if you represent complex numbers as (a, b) pairs, where a is the real part and b is the imaginary part (just like the popular a + bi representation that can be expanded to a * (1, 0) + b * (0, 1)). AB’s length is (1, 0), AC’s length is (0, 1), and BC’s length will also be a complex number.

    I think.







  • Students here usually get Mondays off when the next Tuesday is a holiday. As a university sysadmin, I cherish those days because that’s when we can get actual work done without having to work around the chaotic classroom reservations or work in ten-minute bursts during breaks. It’s also when we can implement changes to the network and update the servers because the office workers don’t tend to come in.

    The last time that happened, all of us sysadmins did about three months’ worth of actual work in a few hours, then used the smaller lecture hall as a cinema for the rest of the day.





  • As a former ADHD kid myself (as in, former kid, still ADHD), I would at least worry about how the condition might affect their academic, social, and emotional development. I was an unfortunate Gifted Kid and picked up a lot of knowledge from cartoons (back when cartoons had educational value), but that came with the cost that I never learned discipline, and never learned how to study. I know that my consistently falling test scores confused and devastated my parents.

    But all that was two decades ago. I hope that ADHD is more understood now and kids don’t have to remain undiagnosed and untreated.