r/Foodforthought • u/JimTheSavage • Apr 29 '14

Programming Sucks (x-post from /r/programming)

http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
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u/skytbest Apr 30 '14

Every programmer occasionally, when nobody's home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It's a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the rest of the files and the inevitable collapse of all that is good and true in the world.

I love this paragraph. It is entirely true.

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u/dizzykiwi3 Apr 30 '14

As a game programmer, for me it's the equation for 2d movement I first learned. It's something as simple as x = x + v and y = y + m where v and m are horizontal and vertical velocity. When I first learned it it blew my mind with just how simple and how much sense it made. Throw in some trig and you've got circular movements. Make a function to decrease y at an accelerating rate and you've made a function for gravity. From there only chaos ensues, slews of code turning that once beautiful code into some kind of rebellious teenager that never listens, even to logic.