Someone tried "April & Bob" once, but MS excel converted it to date.
Can someone explain why authors do this?
Submitted 8 months ago by ChubakPDP11@programming.dev to programmer_humor@programming.dev
https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/74578c98-4b3c-441e-832e-832d6ddf9c24.jpeg
Comments
oo1@kbin.social 8 months ago
Witchfire@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Incels 🤝 Excel
Falsely assuming something is a date
Rusty@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
blindsight@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Alt text:
Changing the names would be easier, but if you’re not comfortable lying, try only making friends with people named Alice, Bob, Carol, etc.
XKCD isn’t complete without the alt text.
LinearArray@programming.dev 8 months ago
I love XKCDs for these
onlinepersona@programming.dev 8 months ago
Same as
foo,bar,baz🙄verstra@programming.dev 8 months ago
why do you provide a link to creative commons license? Ive seen such links few times on lemmy.
gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
This guy licenses his comments under creative commons for some reason.
Owljfien@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 months ago
I hate foo bar etc, seems like a joke that was cringe that has gone on too long. When I was trying to learn programming I was like what the actual hell does this shit mean?
onlinepersona@programming.dev 8 months ago
Same. Really thought it was a joke until I saw it all over the place. It really isn’t that hard to think of random names.
PapstJL4U@lemmy.world [bot] 8 months ago
A,B,C,D - A talks to B, C listens to A,…
Alice, Bob, Charlie,…
For this reason the first persona in my software is always Alice Litte, alice@wonderland.uk. Easier than “asfgg afshd”
CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I used to have a big list of gender ambiguous names I’d use for examples. So I’d use “Alex” and “Blake” or something like that. It also had some non-anglo names on it, just to spice things up.
In comp sci papers there’s a few other common example people. “I” for intruder or imposter (Irene, Isaac). “M” often for malicious or middle-person (Mal). There’s a few more im forgetting now.
AeonFelis@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There’s a few more im forgetting now.
‘E’ (Eve) for “eavesdropper”.
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Cue the fiddler on the roof music…
Tradition!
There’s a helpful wiki article breaking down the full convention en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
jerrythegenius@lemmy.world 8 months ago
”Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people”
— some fella on the internetIndiBrony@lemmy.world 8 months ago
“Never forget to attribute your quotes to George Carlin” - Leonard Nimoy, probably
mrkite@programming.dev 8 months ago
Tradition is just dead people’s baggage. Doug Stanhope.
me_jumper@infosec.pub 8 months ago
Zoop@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Thank you! I had no idea what this was talking about but was curious, so this is perfect. I appreciate it!
Ciel@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
okay, writing and computer science have a common problem: names are hard
vrek@programming.dev 8 months ago
There are two hard challenges in computer science cache invalidation and naming things
lhamil64@programming.dev 8 months ago
And a second problem, off-by-one errors
thisismyhaendel@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Rip ben bitdiddle
Thcdenton@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They’re by e2e story user names too :D
Turun@feddit.de 8 months ago
It’s a more easily readable drop in for A and B.
ValiantDust@feddit.de 8 months ago
Not only more readable than A and B but I would argue it’s also easier to remember who did what a few sentences or paragraphs earlier since Alice and Bob invoke slightly less generic mental images than A and B. For example one is a woman and the other one is a man, maybe even some person or character you know.
And now that I’m thinking about it, the different gender also makes it easier to keep track of who does what because different pronouns are used (at least in English and many other languages).
CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If you ever go to r/relationship_advice and read posts where their friend T did S with P and then A (23 F) got into with G, then yeah…Alice and Bob suddenly makes a lot of sense.
exocrinous@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Fun fact: the problem this is a solution to is known as the gay spock problem
reverendsteveii@lemm.ee 8 months ago
this, but doubly so with Eve. You’ll notice that we often skip over Cindy and Dave and go right to Eve, so often that I don’t even know off the top of my head whether Charlie and Deandra are the conventional names for persons 3 and 4 in this construct. That’s because this construct is used a lot when talking about secure communications and the convention is that “evil” “eavesdropping” Eve is the person trying to destroy, intercept or alter the communication between Alice and Bob. Her role is built into her name.