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Can someone explain why authors do this?

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨ChubakPDP11@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨programmer_humor@programming.dev⁩

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/74578c98-4b3c-441e-832e-832d6ddf9c24.jpeg

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Comments

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  • Turun@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s a more easily readable drop in for A and B.

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    • ValiantDust@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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).

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      • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

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      • exocrinous@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Fun fact: the problem this is a solution to is known as the gay spock problem

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      • reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

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  • oo1@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Someone tried "April & Bob" once, but MS excel converted it to date.

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    • Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Incels 🤝 Excel

      Falsely assuming something is a date

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  • Rusty@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Relevant xkcd

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    • blindsight@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

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      • LinearArray@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I love XKCDs for these

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  • onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Same as foo, bar, baz 🙄

    CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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    • verstra@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      why do you provide a link to creative commons license? Ive seen such links few times on lemmy.

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      • gallopingsnail@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        This guy licenses his comments under creative commons for some reason.

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    • Owljfien@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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?

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      • onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

        CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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  • PapstJL4U@lemmy.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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”

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  • CodexArcanum@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.

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    • AeonFelis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There’s a few more im forgetting now.

      ‘E’ (Eve) for “eavesdropper”.

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  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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

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    • jerrythegenius@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      ”Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people”
      — some fella on the internet

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      • IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        “Never forget to attribute your quotes to George Carlin” - Leonard Nimoy, probably

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      • mrkite@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Tradition is just dead people’s baggage. Doug Stanhope.

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  • me_jumper@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob

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    • Zoop@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Thank you! I had no idea what this was talking about but was curious, so this is perfect. I appreciate it!

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  • Ciel@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    okay, writing and computer science have a common problem: names are hard

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    • vrek@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There are two hard challenges in computer science cache invalidation and naming things

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      • lhamil64@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And a second problem, off-by-one errors

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  • thisismyhaendel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Rip ben bitdiddle

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  • Thcdenton@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They’re by e2e story user names too :D

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