I guess now we finally know why Babbage never finished building the Analytical Engine.
Ada Lovelace invented coding on that thing btw
And then had the wisdom to die before a computer capable of running her programs was invented, thus saving the bother of having to debug them.
I realize you jest, but I bet she did actually debug them by running through them by hand. I’ve found and fixed many bugs via code review without actually running into the bug during a run. Plus wtf else was there to do in the 1800s? Debugging might have been relatively highly entertaining in those days.
Writes code.
Realises that debugging code that was written by the lunatic that is yourself two nights ago is going to be a big part of her life.
dies
We’ve all had debugging sessions where that feels like the best option. Right?
AI Troglodyte: Of course the answer is yes! Money please!
I always assumed they were asking if it was rigged.
Like, i can write function sum(a, b) that always returns 10, and impress people how it’s correct when I pass in 1,9 and 2,8 and 3,7. But if I pass in 7,7 it’ll still return the “right” answer of 10, because it’s rigged and not actually doing math.
That quote is my favorite example of a very polite wtf
Works on my machine
So the I-d10t bug has been around since the beginning, it seems.
I’ve also heard it referred to as PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
PEBKAC - Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair is another one.
And thus the role of QA was born.
I remember when someone built one on Minecraft. Those were the best days of minecraft.
A mechanical computer?
A calculator.
Nowadays, they craft their own microarchitecture, to run Minecraft in Minecraft, on a redstone-mechanical display.
Old enough to remember Babbages video game store. I’d spend hours re-reading the descriptions on the back of every game box. Joy. Great share, thanks!
Ah yes, I remember being in the store when Charles Babbage himself would brag about his high score in Asteroids. Or that time he gave me a copy of the Doom shareware on 3.5" floppy. /s
Don’t you mean 5 and a quarter pence?
The true floppy!
8 inch disks were floppier.
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Could it run Doom though?
I’ve seen a couple papers on theoretical designs for purely mechanical computers that can run doom, but as far as I am aware I’ve never heard of one that’s actually been built.
but in theory yes it could have
it has limited memory but could me expanded, by a lot. but I’m theory yes, no display though.
