ArthurNormanQuotes/Lent2000

Java (Part IA)

[On wizards and C++] The full-length cloak is essential before you use multiple inheritance.

Multiple inheritance provides a good opportunity to cut your throat without even knowing about it.

[On the graphics object method drawString] drawString is not in this case something you use to close a bag.

The code there has more semicolons than is approved by the National Society for the Protection of Semicolons.

Semicolons are to my mind one of the things that are slippery - they slip away and you don't notice.

Founding your own country is believed to be something that requires rather a lot of political will. Either that or a lot of ammunition.

[On the necessity of "this"] Provided you had a language unlike Java where you could write some of your code in green and some in black, there would be no ambiguity. Java has unaccountably turned its back on allowing you to type some of your code in black and some in green. I guess that sometime in the next decade, someone will come up with a colour-coded language.

Computer scientists are mostly sub-literate.

This provides one opportunity for very pleasing confusion.

You'll spend an awful lot of time cursing Java for forcing you to do a good job.

[On I/O in Java] There are two things that conspire to make this nasty. There could be a third thing; if so, that would be that the designers were sadists. However, I didn't design this, and since this is the language we are teaching, we didn't ought to suppose that too out loud.

[On JavaBeans] Bart Simpson had a little rhyme about beans, I seem to remember, which I don't think I should repeat for you.

Oh I don't know - why would I want spiders when my master can offer me rats? Those of you who didn't land in a coffin off Whitby may have difficulty with that remark.

This is something you don't want to do this year unless you are a real masochist. Well, why would you be here if you weren't?

If you make your bread too dry, you get dwarf-bread. If you have dwarf-bread, you are never hungry. You get it out, look at it, and say "Those plants look tasty. So does that worm."

[On using a GZipInputStream with inappropriate input] You can get an error reported saying "Hey, I hate you, you've given me duff data".

[Commenting on the fact that the threading covered in the course is just a taster] This means that there's going to be a lot I'm sweeping under the carpet. In particular, there will be more under the carpet than on it.

[On threads and parallel processing] Since drawing pictures can be rather time-consuming, those of you who want to make the successor to Toy Story will want to understand this technology.

: At this point, Toy Story 2 had been in the cinemas for about 3 weeks

The requirement that you commit to memory the entire documentation is not reasonable until we have converted you to cyborgs, which doesn't happen until half-way through Part IB, when we have an extended Hardware Lab where the chips are fitted.

[On events] Any time you sneeze, assuming you have the nose peripheral attached, ...

[On the general Windows application] Every now and then it pops up a little window which says "Help!!" and probably has an icon of a skull-and-crossbones on it because something has gone terribly wrong. Until you say "No, I won't", it won't go away.

[Frames default to invisible] If you don't set it visible, you will sit there while your program runs, but invisibly. I tend to find that it is rather annoying when my program runs invisibly.

[On coping with simultaneously thinking "Programming is easy" and "Programming is hard"] I don't know whether the best thing to do is to go and have the operation which separates the two halves of your brain. No, I don't think that's a good idea.

[On using monkeys for programming] I do not believe this is an efficient way of writing programs.

If you type when you are half-asleep, you will often find that you follow the syntax of your favorite language. I recommend sitting and typing randomly, and you might find that you write a useful program. Dream on!

ML twists your brain into tight braids which are remarkably hard to unpick.

The experiments which have been done on undergraduates and other laboratory animals...

(Pulling on a hat) There are those who say that I should wear some of my hat collection sometimes. There are also those who say I oughtn't. I'm inclined to believe that those who say I oughtn't are right, but it's getting to the end of term...

I have many, many more hats available but I keep them at home under lock and key most of the time.

Microsoft and Sun haven't seen eye-to-eye on their mutual world domination - in particular, which one should dominate the world.

Visual J++ has some alterations so that you can write code that isn't portable. No, let me correct this, to allow you to take full advantage of the Windows platform on which you will clearly run every program, forever.