Fortune favours the prepared mind
Yesterday I finally crossed off a to-do item that's been bothering me for twenty-one years.
In Primary 4 I had an evil, horrible, hateful, permanently-angry teacher called Mrs Begg. I have no qualms about giving her real name, and even if I did, she's surely dead now. Mrs Begg had one of those rolling endless blackboards, and up the right-hand side she'd write a list of things to do. As soon as the first child finished the last task on the list, she'd add another one on the bottom. I, of course, was usually struggling along somewhere near the top of the list, not because the tasks were too hard (they weren't) but because the work was mostly boring and the volume of stuff I was supposed to get through was too dismaying.
Then, one day, she pronounced herself more than usually dismayed with the slow kids, and wiped off a bunch of items from the list. Great! you might think. But you'd be wrong, because (a) I'd just been told in no uncertain terms that I'd failed, (b) the list still grew faster than I could keep up, and (c) there were actually some items on the wiped-out portion that I was looking forward to doing. When I got to them. Whenever that would be.
In particular, one of the wiped-out tasks was to make one of those paper fortune teller things. As a result of the Bonfire of the Makework, I never learned how to construct one. I'm sure you can imagine the difficulties that the lack of this crucial skill has caused in my subsequent life.
When I'm under stress, the image of this Sisyphean blackboard comes back to haunt me, and especially the task that I was supposed to complete - that I was looking forward to completing - but didn't. So on Sunday I decided to exorcise it once and for all, by sitting down and making a paper fortune teller. I was going to Google for some instructions, but then wormwood_pearl offered to use her Magical Girl Powers¹ and teach me how to make one. Turns out it's really easy: cut out a square of paper, fold it across both diagonals, open it out again, fold all four corners into the centre to make a square with half the area, fold all four corners of the new square into the centre to make another square with a quarter of the area of the original square, fold this third square in half lengthways, then stick your fingers into the folds. If that's not clear, there are, for the moment, diagrams on the Wikipedia page.
Since I'm a geek, the fortunes had a programming slant. After spelling out your favourite programming language and choosing your favourite regular expression metacharacter, you arrive at one of the following four fortunes:
The alert or clueful reader will have noticed that there is only one good fortune, and so if the name of the sitter's favourite programming language has the wrong parity they are denied any possibility of a good outcome. This illustrates the important lesson that, though many technologies may be good enough to succeed, a bad initial choice can scupper you entirely. But even if you choose a language with the right parity, you have only a 50% chance of a good outcome: this illustrates the fact that good technology choices are necessary but not sufficient to success - the skill and good taste of the implementing team are still critical. More devilishly, if I know a particular sitter's favourite programming language in advance I can deny them any chance of success (mwahahaha! The power, it is intoxicating) which illustrates the unfortunate truth that even a good team using the best tools is screwed if the client doesn't play ball.
¹ By which she meant the Magical Powers she has by virtue of being a Girl, not the Powers she would have by virtue of being a Magical Girl. If wormwood_pearl is a Magical Girl, I have seen no sign of it. Which is of course exactly what I would expect to see if she were a Magical Girl...
*cue Bubblegum Crisis music*
In Primary 4 I had an evil, horrible, hateful, permanently-angry teacher called Mrs Begg. I have no qualms about giving her real name, and even if I did, she's surely dead now. Mrs Begg had one of those rolling endless blackboards, and up the right-hand side she'd write a list of things to do. As soon as the first child finished the last task on the list, she'd add another one on the bottom. I, of course, was usually struggling along somewhere near the top of the list, not because the tasks were too hard (they weren't) but because the work was mostly boring and the volume of stuff I was supposed to get through was too dismaying.
Then, one day, she pronounced herself more than usually dismayed with the slow kids, and wiped off a bunch of items from the list. Great! you might think. But you'd be wrong, because (a) I'd just been told in no uncertain terms that I'd failed, (b) the list still grew faster than I could keep up, and (c) there were actually some items on the wiped-out portion that I was looking forward to doing. When I got to them. Whenever that would be.
In particular, one of the wiped-out tasks was to make one of those paper fortune teller things. As a result of the Bonfire of the Makework, I never learned how to construct one. I'm sure you can imagine the difficulties that the lack of this crucial skill has caused in my subsequent life.
When I'm under stress, the image of this Sisyphean blackboard comes back to haunt me, and especially the task that I was supposed to complete - that I was looking forward to completing - but didn't. So on Sunday I decided to exorcise it once and for all, by sitting down and making a paper fortune teller. I was going to Google for some instructions, but then wormwood_pearl offered to use her Magical Girl Powers¹ and teach me how to make one. Turns out it's really easy: cut out a square of paper, fold it across both diagonals, open it out again, fold all four corners into the centre to make a square with half the area, fold all four corners of the new square into the centre to make another square with a quarter of the area of the original square, fold this third square in half lengthways, then stick your fingers into the folds. If that's not clear, there are, for the moment, diagrams on the Wikipedia page.
Since I'm a geek, the fortunes had a programming slant. After spelling out your favourite programming language and choosing your favourite regular expression metacharacter, you arrive at one of the following four fortunes:
- Your projects will all come in on time and under budget.
- You will be assailed by numerous heisenbugs.
- You will not write enough tests.
- You will write a subroutine too cleverly, and later regret doing so.
The alert or clueful reader will have noticed that there is only one good fortune, and so if the name of the sitter's favourite programming language has the wrong parity they are denied any possibility of a good outcome. This illustrates the important lesson that, though many technologies may be good enough to succeed, a bad initial choice can scupper you entirely. But even if you choose a language with the right parity, you have only a 50% chance of a good outcome: this illustrates the fact that good technology choices are necessary but not sufficient to success - the skill and good taste of the implementing team are still critical. More devilishly, if I know a particular sitter's favourite programming language in advance I can deny them any chance of success (mwahahaha! The power, it is intoxicating) which illustrates the unfortunate truth that even a good team using the best tools is screwed if the client doesn't play ball.
¹ By which she meant the Magical Powers she has by virtue of being a Girl, not the Powers she would have by virtue of being a Magical Girl. If wormwood_pearl is a Magical Girl, I have seen no sign of it. Which is of course exactly what I would expect to see if she were a Magical Girl...
*cue Bubblegum Crisis music*