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

[tuulentupa]

Augh, those are so frustrating. Nearly worth of a full workday.
With real languages people often can figure out what the speaker was attempting to say. If only computers could do that.
...but yes, small errors can change the meaning quite radically. My favorite example in Finnish is tapaan (I meet) and tapan (I kill). So are you meeting your boyfriend, or are you having a really bad fight....? xD

[dorchadas]

Oh dear!

I looked around and I also found this example from someone talking about studying Finnish:

Valita: to choose or elect

Valittaa: to complain about

Vallita: to dominate

Vallittaa: to build ramparts

Long vowels have caused me trouble in Japanese before (shujin, "husband"; shuujin, "prisoner"), so it's a little gratifying to see that the pain is more wide-spread than I thought.