And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
-
Now. I was afraid of sea sickness. I'd been on fishing trips on the open ocean, and had been very sick. So I wore a patch.
You may not know this, but there are still Royal Navy traditions practiced aboard ships.
One of the important ones: there's always a comedy officer. Someone whose job it is to be funny, to make sailors smile.
You think that's silly, but sometimes these people are on board these ships for a *year*. It is important that they be amused.
@GeePawHill One of my uncles was medical offer on a submarine. Two weeks out of port, all the various *ahem* medical illnesses have resolved themselves one way or another. And so now his job is... entertainment! That really was his job for most of the time - keeping folks from going stir-crazy.
-
And the other Royal Navy tradition: Captains are inviolate commanders, at all times in all settings. They present "serious". They eat and drink separately from the crew. They have only three or four other officers that they ever get to, comparatively, relax with.
So, you have a comedy officer, and you have a captain, and the captain simply looks the other way when the comedy officer is up to their hijinks.
He *knows* the hijinks. He *sees* the hijinks. But he pretends not to.
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social Fun fact: my mother has expert card shuffling skills because as the daughter of a merchant navy captain she was one of the only people the sailors trusted to deal for money games in or out of port (she would have been around 10 at the time and didn't normally travel with the ship). The captain, of course, couldn't be involved but the crew preferred having relatives of the captain run the game than the local casino.
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill
Fantastic story. Would you mind if I screenshot it and share it on Tumblr - I would link back to your posts as a source. -
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill Thank you for this great story. As so often, we programmers don't get access to clients soon enough to catch these kinds of unclear/misleading requirements.
I don't think I can count the times where at product delivery the client has crucial insights that nobody told me about.
...and I never even got a helicopter flight out of those situations.
-
@dtwx I read (from Jon Turk, who traveled extensively in eastern Siberia) that walruses are scarier than polar bears!
@superball Good to know! I'll avoid them too!
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill Thanks for the story !
-
And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill Thank you for the story!
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill great story. Thanks for sharing.
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill thanks for the write up. Really cool.
-
@GeePawHill Thank you for this great story. As so often, we programmers don't get access to clients soon enough to catch these kinds of unclear/misleading requirements.
I don't think I can count the times where at product delivery the client has crucial insights that nobody told me about.
...and I never even got a helicopter flight out of those situations.
@tsturm @GeePawHill ^this...
The times I've requested "real data" to be told that "its simple" or "covered in the spec" and guess what. Huge bits were complex or/and not in the spec. Usually followed by a massive rewrite, or once, abandoning the project entirely.
-
And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill what a great story! I'll be using it to teach juniors about fun... And talking to your users before even planning anything
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill wonderful story, well told. there are special skills, and wrangling multiple serial datastreams is among them. these days I'd lazily convert separately, drop into database and hide all the complexity in totally separate software that can only read the db. How times have changed...
-
And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill Beautiful story, thanks for sharing
-
@GeePawHill
Fantastic story. Would you mind if I screenshot it and share it on Tumblr - I would link back to your posts as a source.@Rhube Go for it.
-
@GeePawHill One of my uncles was medical offer on a submarine. Two weeks out of port, all the various *ahem* medical illnesses have resolved themselves one way or another. And so now his job is... entertainment! That really was his job for most of the time - keeping folks from going stir-crazy.
@TomF Yep. "Comedy Officer" isn't a thing, except, on most ships that stay at sea for a while, there always *is* one!
-
@Rhube Go for it.
-
And so but anyway, did I ever tell you about my most humiliating experience as a skilled and successful computer programmer?
@GeePawHill Delightful thread -- and you lived to laugh about it! Also happy at the mention of Canadian icebreakers. My grandpa was a merchant sea captain and was responsible for delivering a much-needed icebreaker abroad during the war (to Russia, maybe?). Got a medal for it and they used his silhouette in a poster. Bc when you need an icebreaker, even when lots else is going on, you NEED an ICEBREAKER.
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill
That was a great story.Thank you!
-
And, for the record, I have been a successful professional programmer, an independent, for 45 years. I've failed more times than most people have even tried.
Some days you get the bear.
Some days the bear gets you.
Find joy in it. Without joy, why are we even doing this shit?
@GeePawHill your writing is so engaging, I had a lot of fun reading it. Thank you for sharing! Anywhere else you put up your writings?
-
@GeePawHill your writing is so engaging, I had a lot of fun reading it. Thank you for sharing! Anywhere else you put up your writings?
@adityakhanna Sure, check geepawhill.org , tho I must say I don't usually just tell funny stories about my career.
