{"id":7430,"date":"2018-08-23T12:57:48","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T16:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7430"},"modified":"2018-08-23T12:57:48","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T16:57:48","slug":"bumper-sticker-computer-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7430","title":{"rendered":"Bumper-Sticker Computer Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nBack in the 1980s, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jon_Bentley_(computer_scientist)\">Jon Bentley<\/a> wrote a column for <a href=\"https:\/\/cacm.acm.org\/\">Communications of the ACM<\/a> called <i>Programming Pearls<\/i>. The columns typically considered a programming technique or problem and were very popular. The columns were later published in book form as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Programming-Pearls-2nd-Jon-Bentley\/dp\/0201657880\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1534697955&amp;sr=1-1\">Programming Pearls<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/More-Programming-Pearls-Confessions-Coder\/dp\/0201118890\/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1534697955&amp;sr=1-3\">More Programming Pearls<\/a>. If you haven&rsquo;t read these books, you definitely should. <i>Programming Pearls<\/i>, at least, appears to be available for free download.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nI just came across a pointer to one of those columns, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bowdoin.edu\/~ltoma\/teaching\/cs340\/spring05\/coursestuff\/Bentley_BumperSticker.pdf\">Bumper-Sticker Computer Science<\/a>. I remember reading it in <i>More Programming Pearls<\/i> and I&rsquo;m pretty sure that&rsquo;s where I first learned the rule of thumb that &pi; seconds is a nanocentury. The theme of the column is short computer science aphorisms\u2014such as Duff&rsquo;s remark about \u03c0 seconds\u2014that could conceivably be printed on a bumper sticker.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nIf you haven&rsquo;t seen that column, you should take it look. It&rsquo;s entertaining but, more importantly, distills a lot of our profession&rsquo;s traditional wisdom. It will take only 5 or 10 minutes to read and you&rsquo;re sure to enjoy it and probably learn a thing or two as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the 1980s, Jon Bentley wrote a column for Communications of the ACM called Programming Pearls. The columns typically considered a programming technique or problem and were very popular. The columns were later published in book form as Programming &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=7430\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-7430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7431,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions\/7431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}