What if computers just did what we wanted them to do?

[dorchadas]

Time lost to stupid mistakes in the last week:

• Typing 0 instead of 1, thus iterating over the wrong array and repeatedly getting "undefined": Three hours.


• Misplacing a bracket, causing the loop to always return true: Two hours.


• Checking the wrong function input, thus causing the function to always return false: One hour.

Programming languages are like real languages, in that a single small error totally screws everything up. I'm reminded of my Japanese lesson this week, where Aya-sensei got completely confused when I talked about making 塩鮭 (shiozake, "Salted salmon"), because 鮭, "salmon," and 酒, "alcohol," are pronounced exactly the same and I was talking about leaving it out on the counter to thaw, so she thought I had left three bottles of booze on the counter.

After those three hours lost to 0 and 1, I wish I had that booze on the counter.

Comments

[dorchadas]

I think there's two things I could have done.

1) Use the right counter. I think I just used the generic counter for three objects, when I should have used the counter for fish, which is clearly different from the counter for bottles and would have distinguished them.

2) Say shake, an alternate-but-also-dictionary-correct pronunciation for salmon but not for alcohol. Some people say sake, some people say shake, and I have no idea what the distinction is, if there is one, or why some people use one or the other. But it would have make it obvious.

[throughdoors]

Agh, counters! Korean has those too and they are not my favorite to learn, though interesting to learn about.