

The Demon Machine - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/10/demon-machine.html

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michael_dorfman
_Henry Kissinger has famously said that power is better than sex. Well,
clearly he isn't a programmer!_

Actually, what Kissinger famously said was that power was the ultimate
aphrodisiac, which is something somewhat different. I imagine he is describing
it as a one-way function...

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jobeyonekenobi
Just to test my understanding on this sentence (I have re-read it 4 times
now), JGC is saying that if Kissinger was a programmer, he would be saying
"sex is better than power"? I think I have totally missed the meaning of this
- could someone please point it out to me?

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anthonyb
My interpretation was that programming is better than either sex or power :)

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unignorant
> It's the same little voice that still drives me on to write just another
> line of code, to perfect just another little routine.

I've experience this feeling myself, and I don't think it's a phenomenon
limited to programming. I've had similar 'demons' urging me to do just another
edit-pass over my writing, or in some web project, to tweak a UI/UX component
just a little bit more. If there is a demon here, then it's likely present
within all human creative endeavors.

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dustinupdyke
Odd, I don't hear any audio on the video; is it just me?

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jgrahamc
There is no audio; I had nothing to say.

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dustinupdyke
> Truly, that voice is demonic.

Being Halloween, I was waiting to hear something scary.

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orofino
The phrasing is somewhat confusing, I had to reread it after being confused at
the lack of sound in the video and the mention of a voice synthesis module.
The "voice" refers to the voice in the subsequent paragraph, the one driving
the programmer, not the computer.

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orofino
That works.

Interestingly, it shows that the previous commenter and myself both read the
article the same way, one that I don't think a typical author would
necessarily assume. I skipped the video entirely, upon reading the first words
of the following paragraph went back and played the video, eager to hear that
voice module.

Humans are weird.

