{"id":753,"date":"2006-06-23T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-23T21:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=753"},"modified":"2009-06-11T18:28:39","modified_gmt":"2009-06-11T22:28:39","slug":"when-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2006\/06\/23\/when-n\/","title":{"rendered":"When n<0 won’t do"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found this classic “WTF” example over at a site called The Daily WTF<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

This isn’t the first time<\/a> we’ve seen programmers having a difficult time gasping the intricacies of negative numbers. Heck, I’m sure we all had a little difficulty understanding at first, in the fifth grade. But you’d really think that someone able to program (am I giving too much credit here?), would have a little more sophistication than to distinguish positive and negative numbers with the \u201clittle line thing\u201c in prefixing the number.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\/\/return whether a double is negative<\/span> bool<\/span> IsNegative(double<\/span> n)\r\n{\r\nstring<\/span> nStr = n.ToString();\r\nif<\/span> (nstr.IndexOf('-', 0, 1)) return<\/span> true<\/span>;\r\nreturn<\/span> false<\/span>;\r\n}<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I must say, I do appreciate the irony that many students shy away from Computer Science because they fear the complicated math. If only they knew.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I literally sat stunned for a full minute after seeing this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen programmers having a difficult time gasping the intricacies of negative numbers. But you’d really think that someone able to program (am I giving too much credit here?), would have a little more sophistication than to distinguish positive and negative numbers with the “little line thing” in prefixing the number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-c9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1017,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/01\/04\/on-being-a-programmer-in-a-world-of-non-programmers\/","url_meta":{"origin":753,"position":0},"title":"On Being a Programmer in a World of Non-Programmers","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This post over at The Daily WTF struck a chord with me. 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I mean, I know that the political process in this country is one that has evolved\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image courtesty Flikr user umjanedoan","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2008\/11\/really-old-law-books.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1212,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/07\/19\/the-quixotic-quest-for-invulnerability\/","url_meta":{"origin":753,"position":3},"title":"The Quixotic Quest for Invulnerability","author":"Keith Survell","date":"July 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Schneier on Security: Homeland Security Cost-Benefit Analysis. A very worthwhile read - basically: The premises: The number of potential terrorist targets is essentially infinite. The probability that any individual target will be attacked is essentially zero. 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