>>>Oooooh, now what have I missed over the last 3 weeks?
>>
>>Everything ...
>
>Hmmm, Sergey. You remind of a colleague I used to have. When you shouted at the computer "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!!!"
>he's always answer back "Cos you TOLD it to"


I took one (1) computer class in college, strictly out of interest in this newfangled stuff. It couldn't have been much further from my major and counted only as an elective, not toward the specific requirements for graduation. Dating myself, the course was Fortran I and involved decks of punch cards and waiting lists for late night access to the almighty time-share computer. It must have inexplicably given me the bug, because here I still am in the field. Anyway, the first day of class the prof said something I have never forgotten: "A computer is an idiot. All it knows is what you tell it."

Another of his pithy utterances was in response to a question in class. He had some code up on the overhead projector (!) which used a variable named jj, as many of his code samples did. One student asked if the name had to be jj. "Yew can call it Sam if yew want to," he replied in his Southern accent. For several years afterwards, long after I was gainfully employed in my unexpected field of computer programming, I made a point of including a variable named Sam in every program. Properly commented and explained, of course <lol>.