Men in C, Women in Java
Here's a funny explanation of why Men = C and Women = Java.
You have to be a real geek to fully appreciate and understand this story ;)
-----Message d'origine-----
De: Robin Lavallee
Date: 2 mai, 2003 11:45
A: JP
Objet: Men in C, Women in Java
Tonight, at dinner, I asked my mom if this was a carry-your-plate-around
meal or a pass-the-food-around meal. The response was, "Well, it's kinda
hard to pass the food..."
"So then it's a carry-your-plate-around meal?"
"Yes."
Now, this situation is not all that odd. But just you wait till I bring
history into the discussion. My mother and I have had similar interchanges
once every two weeks for about a year. I ask a really simply question with
a binary answer, and I get an explanation of the answer back. Mind you, and
this is important, the answer is never returned, only the explanation.
After I confirm the relation between the explanation and the answer, the
interchange is over.
This is such a darn simple attempt at communication that I am almost 100%
sure the reason we have problems is due to our inherently different
communication styles. I ask for a boolean answer. Yes or no. Right or
wrong. 0 OR 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! And what do I get? A text string. A
freaking text string I have to parse through and comprehend! Like, where
did I say I expected a text string answer? NOWHERE!!!
Being the programming nerd I am, I immediately hypothesized that men speak
(and think, mostly, but that is another rant) in something like C. It's
low-level, precise and efficient. Women, on the other hand, speak in
something like Java. It does more per statement, requires interpreting on
every machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance
overhead like there's no tomorrow.
What do I mean by this? Let me examine men first. In the absence of women,
men often resort to grunting as a form of communication. A grunt clearly
correlates to a 1, and no grunt clearly correlates to a 0. We have a 1 and
a 0, we got binary!
But seriously, let me take the three adjectives I used above to prove men
speak in C. The three are "low-level, precise and efficient." I can prove
the middle with one shot. Remember my question above? It had two clearly
defined (even named) answers, and it clearly should have been answered with
one of them. Right there, my question was precise in both form and expected
answer. It was clearly a runtime error to get a text string return type.
Or how about "low-level" and "efficient"? The two go hand-in-hand. When I
say, "I need to go to the store," I mean "I need to go to the store." There
really is not a simpler way to define the need. That's a low-level
definition. Do I imply anything by the statement? Am I really trying to
tell you you look fat? NO! I am merely telling you about my need. And since
my entire intention in communicating was phrased in that one easy to
understand sentence, it is efficient. There are no wasted words. It takes
exactly zero processor overhead to interpret the sentence, for there is no
interpretation that needs done. And no overhead is the same thing as
efficiency.
And what about women? Well, I have not forgotten them. I explained that
women's language "does more per statement, requires interpreting on every
machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance overhead like
there's no tomorrow." Notice that I cannot even simplify the
characteristics of their language without using lengthy phrases. For men's
C, I used three adjectives, one of which was hyphenated. See a pattern yet?
Women's Java does more per statement, so it appears to be a higher powered
language. Note that this is directly antagonistic to the low-level quality
of men's C. Women have perfected the art of telling volumes of detail in a
few sentences. They are so good that they can communicate whole sentences
of men's C by body language. Rumor has it that women shuck the spoken word
completely when men are not around and simply communicate by subtle eye
motions and throat clearings. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors,
as I am never around a group of women who have no men around. Go figure.
Anyway, on to the next characteristic. Women's Java requires interpretation
to something like men's C by every listener. This ties in very closely to
the above point about high/low level of language. This system, you would
think, is doomed to failure because meaning is decided separately by every
listener. More on this later. Suffice to say (in this paragraph) that this
is the source of unending communication problems between men and women.
Last we have that women's Java loses performance overhead. Men can speak
sentences on end, and the listeners are ready for more right afterwards.
Why? Because no time is spent on interpreting his words. Women, however,
can say something that takes days to interpret. This is commonly referred
to as "playing hard to get." She says "no," but she really means "Yes, and
bring a dozen daises with you next time. I promise I will be surprised if I
get them. Otherwise, I will be despondent because you OBVIOUSLY do not know
how to take a 'no'." Clearly, the average male can spend days or even weeks
to decode this, for the real answer has absolutely nothing at all to do
with the words used to communicate the answer. In the extreme case, men
simply grow sluggish in their movements and stop making sense because their
mind is taken by trying to understand what she said. A few have even been
known to die because the interpretation process goes into an infinite loop
and takes away all processing time. This language CLEARLY loses performance
overhead.
But wait! There's more!
Can we explain the problems of communicating between the sexes based on the
hypothesis of men's C and women's Java? You had better believe we can!
Let's take men's C and its ability to be efficient. Many men are so used to
being efficient that excess information or processing is abhorrent to them.
For example, every month or so, my mother tells me the details of a
situation I neither care about, will ever care about or will remember
tomorrow. Usually, I ask why I got all this worthless data. Now, get this,
she answers, "I just thought you might want to know." I might want to know?
When in the last 20 years of my existence (which is all of it) have I even
hinted that I wanted to know information about things irrelevant to me?
NEVER! Now we change roles and see what happens:
"I_D (she calls me by my real name, actually), how was school today?"
"Fine."
See, I so love efficient speech that I culled all the worthless, irrelevant
data out of my day to minimize the stress I would put my mom through
hearing about my day. But is she thankful? Does she kiss my feet? NO! She
wants more detail! The very detail I omitted because it doesn't matter to
her! Problem is, I omitted it so hard I forgot it. Come on, though. I
basically sorted all the junk mail out of her mailbox and she wants to know
what I sorted out. This might explain the phenomenon of the ubiquity of
junk mail, but that's another rant.
But the wonder of my hypothesis goes way beyond explaining those two
stereotypical male/female communication issues. You see, the real core of
men's C is low-level, efficient statements. The real core of women's Java
is high-level, interpreted (inefficient) statements. They are clearly
incompatible with each other.
Take the above sample men's C sentence, "I need to go to the store."
Another man hears this as "I need to go to the store." He does this because
he presumes the words mean exactly what they literally mean. A woman,
however, often hears the sentence and thinks it's really women's Java.
Thus, she hears:
"I am offering you a golden opportunity to tell me whatever you need at the
store. Whatever you tell me, I will pick up. And I will pick up the right
kind, even though you never told me which 'the right kind' is. Furthermore,
I will stroll through the aisles looking for great sales and stock up on
products we are already stocked up on. Lastly, I will wait happily here
beside the door for several minutes with keys in hand and shoes on feet
waiting for you to gather your list."
The study of language is amazing, is it not? This one men's C statement, if
interpreted through a women's JVM (more on different JVM's later) turns
into a monstrous paragraph of detailed intentions that a normal man would
not think of ever. Even if he sat down and tried to generate all that
detail, his inherent bent on efficiency and irrelevant data culling would
preclude him from making all that.
And, I might add, the problem goes in reverse as well. Men try, Lord love
them, to understand statements in women's Java as though they are men's C.
When she says, "Do I look fat?" she is not looking for a boolean, integer
or floating point answer. If she gets one, she generates what might be
euphemistically called a "stack overflow". My own personal interpretation
of this question is, "I hate you and am trying to find an excuse to do so."
When she says, "How in love were you with other women before you met me?"
well, I have no clue what the answer is supposed to be. You'd have to ask a
woman.
But we men don't admit defeat that easily! No! We try on helplessly for
many years trying to build our own JVM. Note that the perfect version of
the JVM is inside every woman's brain somewhere. Men do not have that or
anything like that. Thus, men build up their own sets of interpretations of
women's Java statements into men's C statements. I gave one of mine above
about the notorious "fat" question. One problem is, women's Java is
context-sensitive: it means different things in different settings or with
different tones. Another problem is that men can only build their JVM's one
statement at a time in a trial-and-error process. These two problems
clearly prohibit men from ever completely understanding women's Java.
Is there adequate support for my hypothesis? I believe I have given enough
support to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, indeed, men speak in C
and women speak in Java.
-----
Funny heh ! ;) -JP
You have to be a real geek to fully appreciate and understand this story ;)
-----Message d'origine-----
De: Robin Lavallee
Date: 2 mai, 2003 11:45
A: JP
Objet: Men in C, Women in Java
Tonight, at dinner, I asked my mom if this was a carry-your-plate-around
meal or a pass-the-food-around meal. The response was, "Well, it's kinda
hard to pass the food..."
"So then it's a carry-your-plate-around meal?"
"Yes."
Now, this situation is not all that odd. But just you wait till I bring
history into the discussion. My mother and I have had similar interchanges
once every two weeks for about a year. I ask a really simply question with
a binary answer, and I get an explanation of the answer back. Mind you, and
this is important, the answer is never returned, only the explanation.
After I confirm the relation between the explanation and the answer, the
interchange is over.
This is such a darn simple attempt at communication that I am almost 100%
sure the reason we have problems is due to our inherently different
communication styles. I ask for a boolean answer. Yes or no. Right or
wrong. 0 OR 1 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! And what do I get? A text string. A
freaking text string I have to parse through and comprehend! Like, where
did I say I expected a text string answer? NOWHERE!!!
Being the programming nerd I am, I immediately hypothesized that men speak
(and think, mostly, but that is another rant) in something like C. It's
low-level, precise and efficient. Women, on the other hand, speak in
something like Java. It does more per statement, requires interpreting on
every machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance
overhead like there's no tomorrow.
What do I mean by this? Let me examine men first. In the absence of women,
men often resort to grunting as a form of communication. A grunt clearly
correlates to a 1, and no grunt clearly correlates to a 0. We have a 1 and
a 0, we got binary!
But seriously, let me take the three adjectives I used above to prove men
speak in C. The three are "low-level, precise and efficient." I can prove
the middle with one shot. Remember my question above? It had two clearly
defined (even named) answers, and it clearly should have been answered with
one of them. Right there, my question was precise in both form and expected
answer. It was clearly a runtime error to get a text string return type.
Or how about "low-level" and "efficient"? The two go hand-in-hand. When I
say, "I need to go to the store," I mean "I need to go to the store." There
really is not a simpler way to define the need. That's a low-level
definition. Do I imply anything by the statement? Am I really trying to
tell you you look fat? NO! I am merely telling you about my need. And since
my entire intention in communicating was phrased in that one easy to
understand sentence, it is efficient. There are no wasted words. It takes
exactly zero processor overhead to interpret the sentence, for there is no
interpretation that needs done. And no overhead is the same thing as
efficiency.
And what about women? Well, I have not forgotten them. I explained that
women's language "does more per statement, requires interpreting on every
machine by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and loses performance overhead like
there's no tomorrow." Notice that I cannot even simplify the
characteristics of their language without using lengthy phrases. For men's
C, I used three adjectives, one of which was hyphenated. See a pattern yet?
Women's Java does more per statement, so it appears to be a higher powered
language. Note that this is directly antagonistic to the low-level quality
of men's C. Women have perfected the art of telling volumes of detail in a
few sentences. They are so good that they can communicate whole sentences
of men's C by body language. Rumor has it that women shuck the spoken word
completely when men are not around and simply communicate by subtle eye
motions and throat clearings. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors,
as I am never around a group of women who have no men around. Go figure.
Anyway, on to the next characteristic. Women's Java requires interpretation
to something like men's C by every listener. This ties in very closely to
the above point about high/low level of language. This system, you would
think, is doomed to failure because meaning is decided separately by every
listener. More on this later. Suffice to say (in this paragraph) that this
is the source of unending communication problems between men and women.
Last we have that women's Java loses performance overhead. Men can speak
sentences on end, and the listeners are ready for more right afterwards.
Why? Because no time is spent on interpreting his words. Women, however,
can say something that takes days to interpret. This is commonly referred
to as "playing hard to get." She says "no," but she really means "Yes, and
bring a dozen daises with you next time. I promise I will be surprised if I
get them. Otherwise, I will be despondent because you OBVIOUSLY do not know
how to take a 'no'." Clearly, the average male can spend days or even weeks
to decode this, for the real answer has absolutely nothing at all to do
with the words used to communicate the answer. In the extreme case, men
simply grow sluggish in their movements and stop making sense because their
mind is taken by trying to understand what she said. A few have even been
known to die because the interpretation process goes into an infinite loop
and takes away all processing time. This language CLEARLY loses performance
overhead.
But wait! There's more!
Can we explain the problems of communicating between the sexes based on the
hypothesis of men's C and women's Java? You had better believe we can!
Let's take men's C and its ability to be efficient. Many men are so used to
being efficient that excess information or processing is abhorrent to them.
For example, every month or so, my mother tells me the details of a
situation I neither care about, will ever care about or will remember
tomorrow. Usually, I ask why I got all this worthless data. Now, get this,
she answers, "I just thought you might want to know." I might want to know?
When in the last 20 years of my existence (which is all of it) have I even
hinted that I wanted to know information about things irrelevant to me?
NEVER! Now we change roles and see what happens:
"I_D (she calls me by my real name, actually), how was school today?"
"Fine."
See, I so love efficient speech that I culled all the worthless, irrelevant
data out of my day to minimize the stress I would put my mom through
hearing about my day. But is she thankful? Does she kiss my feet? NO! She
wants more detail! The very detail I omitted because it doesn't matter to
her! Problem is, I omitted it so hard I forgot it. Come on, though. I
basically sorted all the junk mail out of her mailbox and she wants to know
what I sorted out. This might explain the phenomenon of the ubiquity of
junk mail, but that's another rant.
But the wonder of my hypothesis goes way beyond explaining those two
stereotypical male/female communication issues. You see, the real core of
men's C is low-level, efficient statements. The real core of women's Java
is high-level, interpreted (inefficient) statements. They are clearly
incompatible with each other.
Take the above sample men's C sentence, "I need to go to the store."
Another man hears this as "I need to go to the store." He does this because
he presumes the words mean exactly what they literally mean. A woman,
however, often hears the sentence and thinks it's really women's Java.
Thus, she hears:
"I am offering you a golden opportunity to tell me whatever you need at the
store. Whatever you tell me, I will pick up. And I will pick up the right
kind, even though you never told me which 'the right kind' is. Furthermore,
I will stroll through the aisles looking for great sales and stock up on
products we are already stocked up on. Lastly, I will wait happily here
beside the door for several minutes with keys in hand and shoes on feet
waiting for you to gather your list."
The study of language is amazing, is it not? This one men's C statement, if
interpreted through a women's JVM (more on different JVM's later) turns
into a monstrous paragraph of detailed intentions that a normal man would
not think of ever. Even if he sat down and tried to generate all that
detail, his inherent bent on efficiency and irrelevant data culling would
preclude him from making all that.
And, I might add, the problem goes in reverse as well. Men try, Lord love
them, to understand statements in women's Java as though they are men's C.
When she says, "Do I look fat?" she is not looking for a boolean, integer
or floating point answer. If she gets one, she generates what might be
euphemistically called a "stack overflow". My own personal interpretation
of this question is, "I hate you and am trying to find an excuse to do so."
When she says, "How in love were you with other women before you met me?"
well, I have no clue what the answer is supposed to be. You'd have to ask a
woman.
But we men don't admit defeat that easily! No! We try on helplessly for
many years trying to build our own JVM. Note that the perfect version of
the JVM is inside every woman's brain somewhere. Men do not have that or
anything like that. Thus, men build up their own sets of interpretations of
women's Java statements into men's C statements. I gave one of mine above
about the notorious "fat" question. One problem is, women's Java is
context-sensitive: it means different things in different settings or with
different tones. Another problem is that men can only build their JVM's one
statement at a time in a trial-and-error process. These two problems
clearly prohibit men from ever completely understanding women's Java.
Is there adequate support for my hypothesis? I believe I have given enough
support to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, indeed, men speak in C
and women speak in Java.
-----
Funny heh ! ;) -JP