Sometimes you find something that’s juuuuust right at your comprehension level, but written by a smart person who clearly thinks it’s nothing. You start reading what they’re reading and, heck, before long your night follows a doe trail paved with grey-matter through the forest of neck beards.
My latest hunting trip? (having a hard time following the metaphor I started) started with a simple tweet that I definitely get. But just about anything that smart people have to say about C intrigues me (that’s why I often read through Torvalds mail digests) so of course I took some time to read through comments and replies. And then academic papers? I stumbled onto this one somehow, which, while intriguing, I do not understand in the slightest:
The comments are pretty amazing on that thread. Where is this mysterious mass of constructive, smart programmers hiding? Do you all know each other? I’m sure you wouldn’t be caught dead reading this blog. Any of you want to come work with me? You would just need to talk about computers or whatever and I would sit at your feet (criss-cross applesauce) drinking lightly brewed green tea, scrawling down notes that would later become Google search terms.
A related paper also piqued my interest– it’s probably the driest of what I found that night, but that’s Mozilla for you. I kid, of course, that little fox and I have been through some rough times.
Now imagine one of those scenes in every other movie where a character wanders off in the wilderness, trips over a rock, and tumbles down a hill. That was me onto this bug report for Clang which I found pretty clang interesting. They should really mark the difficult sentences with those little subscript crescendo symbols so you know when the reading is about to get fortissimo.
Just about here I recall that computers are just a bunch of telegraph relays hooked together and we’re now [discover/invent]ing things like this.
Mentally exhausted, I retreat to rewatching The Office. The first season after Michael leaves is thankfully much better than I remember– good thing because my brain needs some time to cool off: the familiar whir of the secret CPU fan in my head is slowly settling on a low, steady RPM…
I’d like you all to remember that this blog is named after a book. In this book, the main character is so curious about magic that he accidentally turns himself into a donkey. This is what I do. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more wonder to experience.