| | | | How to hunt elephants:
----------------------
CS-students hunt elephants by executing the following algorithm:
begin
{
go to africa
start at cape of good hope
search africa south-to-north, going bidirectionally east/west.
for every step do
{
catch any visible animal.
compare it to an elephant.
halt() on match.
}}
Experienced programmers improve the above algorithm by placing an animal
known to be an elephant in Cairo to make sure the program terminates
correctly.
Assembler-programmers rather like executing the above algorithem while
walking on all fours
SQL-programmers use SELECT elephant FROM africa.
NATURAL-programmers ask ADABAS to bring them an elephant.
LOGO-programmers ride through africa on a turtle.
COBOL-programmers do the same on a dinosaur.
BASIC-programmers prefer a horse powered wagon which has always engaged
brakes.
C-programmers first determine the sizeof(elephant), try to allocate it,
forget to check the return code and then shoot wild pointers at the
elephant.
C++-programmers insist on elephants being a class, thus it has to provide
a public "huntme()" method. In case the elephant leaves africa (it's
scope), there is no problem either, as this automatically calls the
destructor.
PASCAL-programmers first mark a spot on a map, place an END there, and
hope, that Nikolaus Wirth gets flattened by a raging elephant at that
very spot.
MODULA-programnmers simply import an elephant from a zoo.
LISP-programmers build a maze of brackets and hope the elephant gets lost
in it, as it doesn't know how to use emacs bracket highlighting.
Mathematicians hunt elephants, by removing all elements from the set
africa which is not an elephant, and then cathing the remaining set.
Experienced mathematicians first try to prove the existence of at least
one unique elephant, before starting over as above, where the above
will be labeled a "simple exercise to the reader".
Mathematics teachers in university do prove the existence of at least
one unique elephant before leaving the rest of the task to the students.
Clever mathematicians just build a small cage, climb inside and say
"I define: This is outside."
Engineers hunt elephants, by going to africa, hunting all grey animals and
assuming it is an elephant, if the weight dos not deviate more than 15%
from some known-to-be-an-elephant thing.
Physics people have their own set of methods for hunting elephants:
- they fly over africa at nearly lightspeed. Lorentz contraction will
make the elephant a flat thing. Thus they just roll it up and secure it
with a rubber ring.
- As they are naturally lazy, they construct an automated elephant
detection and catching machine. The construction will take longer than
the method used by the asm guys.
- They build a small cage. According to quantum mechanics, the elephant
has a nonzero probability of being in the cage. it is thus effectively
caught. Just a matter of time ...
- A high power ringlaser is build at the three outer corners of africa and
the path is them contracted until all animals that can't go below it
are either inside the area or ashes. The remaining ones should contain
an elephant.
Economists do not hunt elephants. Though they are convinced, that
elephants would surrender themselves, if you pay them enough.
Statistics people hunt the first animal they see n times and then call it
elephant.
Business consultants do not hunt elephants. Many of them never hunted
anything. Though you can hire them at excessive hourly rates to hear
good advice about it.
System analytics would be (in theory) capable of calculating the
correlation between hatsize and hitrate for hunting elephants, if someone
would tell them what the heck an elephant is.
SAP-engineers declare the first animal they see an elephant, and the the
adjust their idea of an elephant to that animal.
MICROSOFT buys an elephant from a Seattle zoo, makes a big bunch of copies
and then talks all world into the idea, that everyone needs one and that
it is the ideal helper application for MS office and will then export
14 million copies to africa. | |  | |  |
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