
Programmers' Day - kexek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmers%27_Day
======
AngryParsley
Degrees in computer science and computer engineering are in the top 10 for
average earnings. We get to build all kinds of cool stuff used by people
around the world. For many of us, programming is _fun_. And we get paid to do
it!

 _Every_ day is programmer's day.

~~~
spiralganglion
Some interesting data I pulled together today:

Approximate revenue-per-employee. Data from Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia.

Apple makes $2,000,000 per employee. Facebook makes $1,500,000. Google makes
$1,000,000. Microsoft makes $800,000. Sony makes $500,000. Kraft makes
$400,000. Walmart makes $200,000. McDonalds makes $60,000.

Now, if only there was a good source of users-per-engineer. I read that
Facebook is somewhere around 1,260,000. That's just awesome.

We create so much value, and for so many people.

~~~
smiler
Of course, these are interesting and great numbers, but I don't think that
they are the only measure of value.

McDonalds may make 'only' $60,000 per employee, but it employs _over 1.5
million people_. I'm grateful that McDs are providing jobs for those who need
them. They also of course offer opportunities for people to own franchises and
run their 'own' businesses

~~~
MikeMacMan
The 1.5 million you cite includes franchised employees, while the 60K
revenue/employee number does not.

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thebootstrapper
Great day to quote from Dijkstra's good old article. At that time(1957)
programming was not considered as a profession!

Extract from Humble Programmer[1]

"..in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your
profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities
of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no
such profession. And, believe it or not, but under the heading "profession" my
marriage act shows the ridiculous entry "theoretical physicist"!.."

[1]
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340....](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html)

~~~
spiralganglion
What a quote! I would have opted for _exterminator_ — a satisfactorily
legitimate profession, and a nice bit of tongue-in-cheek for those who know
what is really meant.

As a child, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered
that I wanted to kill bugs. Of course, this was a bit before our meaning of
"bug" became common knowledge, so it always got a good laugh. I'm thrilled to
have followed my childhood dream to be a part of this wonderful industry of
err exterminators. Happy PD everybody!

~~~
hristov
He probably would not have chosen that. Another piece of Dijkstra lore is that
he really hated the term "bug". He said that by using this term the programmer
tried to avoid his responsibility for making correct programs by suggesting
that errors somehow creep into your program out of their own volition through
no fault of the programmer.

Dijkstra was really hard core in terms of correctness. He insisted that each
programmer had to work out a mathematical proof that his program will always
provide correct output for every single possible input, and submit that proof
when submitting the program. Things did not work out that way.

------
cgarvey
"...the color white was chosen because it represents a hex number with the
largest value in a 24-bit red green blue (RGB) color space: 0xFFFFFF, so
programmers worldwide wear white in celebration."

Only Programmers would have a holiday in which we wear white after labor day
to celebrate.

~~~
hugh3
Just remember to take a spare shirt, for after you spill your breakfast
burrito on the first one.

------
atomicdog
Can you imagine "programmer's day" being officially recognized in a western
society such as the US or the UK? Over here, intellectual pursuits such as
programming are effectively spat upon.

~~~
hugh3
"Effectively spat upon", really?

The reason Programmer's Day will never be a thing here is that programming is
a low-risk, well-paid, white-collar professional occupation like many others.
Nothing special about it, and we don't have a lawyer's day or an actuary's day
or a guy who designs the machine that makes tiles for bathrooms day.

~~~
jisaacstone
I, for one, am all for a "guy who designs the machine that makes tiles for
bathrooms" day.

No seriously, manufacturing engineers need more recognition, and don't even
belong on the same list as lawyers. More children need to know that "building
machines" is a viable career choice. I wish I had known . . . [/rant]

~~~
rikthevik
I agree. It's fascinating to take pretty much any device on your desk, and
think, "How would I build a machine / process to build 10,000 of these a day?"
Manufacturing engineering is something I have a great deal of respect for.
Lots of hard problems, infinitely changing constraints, many challenges - and
then marketing fucks it all up. :)

------
kuroir
Happy Programmers' Day! On this day I'll do what I love the most: code!

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Killah911
Wishing all programmers Manÿ Happÿ Returns of the Daÿ and Maÿ each one of
those Returns compile successfullÿ

ÿ : 256th ascii character (should henceforth be the Programmers' day symbol)

correction: Extended ASCII character per <http://www.ascii-code.com/>

~~~
ysangkok
There are only 128 ASCII characters.

~~~
Killah911
You're right, I should have said Extended ASCII

~~~
MichaelGG
Extended ASCII isn't a proper term either. ASCII is 7-bits, that's all.
There's no 8-bit extension to ASCII. Extended ASCII is really more like "some
8-bit encoding that shares the first 127 values with ASCII" -- and there are
plenty of such encodings.

~~~
mechanical_fish
On Easter we hunt for eggs.

On Halloween we dress in costumes.

On Festivus we air grievances and perform feats of strength.

On Programmer's Day? We argue about the naming of things!

(Though we have to figure out how to turn it into a drinking game.)

------
pestaa
Today is the day I must hunt down that irritating segfault, then!

~~~
pestaa
I should add that 10 minutes later I got rid of that specific segfault I spent
nights on! Wish you all the same luck.

------
ramki
Today is dedicated to all brave souls who dared to be a programmer...!!

~~~
iwwr
Untangling code none dared untangle before.

~~~
dragonquest
Not to forget, created tangled code to untangle later.

------
rkalla
Well happy PD to everybody.

Today just happened to be an unexpectedly productive programming day... I
guess I was "celebrating" without realizing it :)

------
hollerith
Any Russians want to tell us whether this holiday has any meaning to the
ordinary Russians?

~~~
va1en0k
I don't know. Please have this Russian comic strip

[http://habrastorage.org/storage1/9882fe1c/28be61de/5ec00a27/...](http://habrastorage.org/storage1/9882fe1c/28be61de/5ec00a27/2f0fba17.png)

(Programmer is working. / Programmer is celebrating the programmers' day)

~~~
mainguy
хорошо... каждый день, день программиста (I have no idea if that's right, but
I was playing with google translate)

~~~
dchest
Replace "," with "—", and you got it right.

------
brain5ide
I'm ashamed. Came to work after lunch and just then got told it's today. Why
didn't I read HN in the morning? Now have to figure out a way to make a hack
in the office to awww everybody.

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SkippyZA
Happy Programmers' Day. I mentioned it to our Directors yesterday. Hoping we
get cake at least.

~~~
SkippyZA
Didn't get cake...

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Tyrannosaurs
Anyone tell me what I'm meant to do on Programmers Day or why it even exists?

~~~
MarkPNeyer
solve an np complete problem in your head!

~~~
simonsarris
We can all do this!

Given { −2, −3, 4, 13, −1}, is there a non-empty subset of the numbers that
sums to zero?

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phatbyte
Happy Programmer's Day. Wish you a full day of coding with no bugs :P

~~~
MattGrommes
If you don't have any bugs, how do you know your code is working correctly? I
personally never trust code that works on the first try. :)

~~~
phatbyte
You should try writing some unit tests then :P

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spiralganglion
I can't wait to see the Google Doodle for this.

~~~
BillSaysThis
No Doodle for you, get back to your BDD lean cloud-backed, mobile first
bootstrapped startup! Stop messing on HN or your accelerator/angel investors
will take away your shiny new MacBook Air.

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mathattack
Let's just be practical and all take today off!

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TomVolpe
Happy Programmers' Day! Keep on hacking!

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wlievens
Happy Programmer's Day guys and gals!

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ycatvfan
I did not know this, otherwise I could have taken the day off.

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adambyrtek
Looks like my birthday is on Programmers' Day, nice.

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forther
256 can NOT be represented with 8 bits

~~~
spiralganglion
That's the number of distinct values you get with 8 bits. Since there is no
"zeroth" day of the year, it makes sense to have it on the 256th day instead
of the 255th.

~~~
forther
yep. I just commented on exact wiki words.

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alexanderb
Happy PD, dear colleagues!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Comrades? ^^.

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Derbasti
OK then, let's solve that compile issue today then.

