Re: Sorting a CList

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Some years ago a programmer who worked with me kept being dismayed because every time he
asked me a question I had an answer. A couple years later we were working on a project,
when I remarked, "I have a 25th anniversary this month!" (it was September, 1988).

"Of what?" he asked.

"I met my first computer 25 years ago. It was September, 1963".

He then said, in his best Marvin-the-paranoid-android voice, "Ohhhh. I feel soooo
depressed".

"Why do you feel depressed?"

"Because I was *born* in October of 1963!"

"Well, that's why I know so much more. I've been doing this longer than you've been
alive! You'll be doing this to junior programmers in a few years. Don't worry about it!"

He went on to get his PhD (one of my personal triumphs was being one of the people who
convinced him to do this) and now has 20 more years experience. I expect he's at least as
good as I am, and probably better.

Write enough code, and you eventually end up knowing a lot. All it takes is experience
(and remember: good judgment is the result of experience; experience is the result of bad
judgment. Trust me: I have good judgment, at least most of the time. Now figure out
why...)

*****
One day I went in to see my thesis advisor. I'd been bashing my head against the wall for
two weeks on a problem that was COMPLETELY intractable. So I filled his board up with
diagrams, he sat there and said, "But isn't that just a special case of..." and I turned
to the board, my jaw fell down, and it was OBVIOUS what I'd missed. So I got seriously
pissed off at myself, and said "I have no idea why I'm wasting your time; I'm not capable
of doing this work!"

So he told me to sit down and listen. When he was working on HIS Ph.D., on some bizarre
aspect of partial differential equations, he hit a similar block. He filled the board
with formulae, and his advisor said "But that's just <name here>'s Theorem" He was a
graduate assistant, taught the introductory calculus courses, and in fact had just taught
this theorem and its derivation the previous semester. His advisor told him a similar
story.

So one day one of my students walks into my office with an intractable problem, fills the
board with diagrams, and says "I have no idea how to approach this problem!" I looked at
it, and said, "But you've just described an abstract data type model with derivation!"

He got The Look. I'd seen that Look, not too many years before, from his side. He threw
the eraser across the office, and said "I'm wasting my time here! I've been working on
this for three months and never saw that!"

So I sat him down and told the first three cycles of this story. He was now the fourth
cycle. I told him that someday he, too, would have this experience, and please pass the
story on.

About five years later we met at a conference. He said "It happened!"

I asked "What happened?"

"That day in your office. A couple months ago, one of my students walked in, filled my
board with diagrams, and the solution was obvious. So I told her, and she burst into
tears. But since she had planned an academic career, I told her ot sit down, and told her
your story, and now she was the fifth turn of the cycle. And someday it would happen to
her and she should pass this story on."

I haven't seen him in many years, although his student did go on to get her Ph.D., and
I've always wondered if she's had the experience and has passed the story on once more.
joe
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:18:38 GMT, MrAsm <mrasm@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:13:13 -0700, "Tom Serface"
<tom.nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Indeed, but Joe knows a bunch...

Tom

He certainly knows much *more* than me.

MrAsm
Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: newcomer@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm
.

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