
Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm? - yaph
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21186724/have-i-tattooed-a-syntax-error-on-my-arm?newsletter=1&nlcode=4592%7Cdedb
======
ambiate
I suppose this is an excellent example of testing prior to moving to
production. I have 'ex nihilo ad absurdum' tattooed on my right forearm. It
was more a reminder of the dark depression that spawns from philosophy and to
distance myself from the subject. I would undo that decision if I had the
choice.

~~~
mikestew
I'm afraid that's the conclusion I've come to with every idea for a tattoo
I've had over the last 20 or so years. I can't come up with anything with
which I care to be stuck for the rest of my life. "Yeah, that's not going to
seem so clever in ten years, is it?" So my skin remains untouched by the inky
goodness of my local tattoo artist.

~~~
piyush_soni
Go for Henna tattoos ... They are temporary .. like a few days/weeks. :)

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tikhonj
For some reason, people really like complaining about questions like this
being closed.

I think this misses the mark for two reasons. One is simply that these sort of
questions aren't really the point of SO, but I guess people disagree.

A bigger one is that closing is no big deal. People can still read the
question and vote on answers! The only thing you can't do is add _new_
answers. And given that there's already a perfectly good answer along with a
bunch of other posts, more answers would just be adding to the noise.

Seems like a win-win to me, but others somehow construe this as the downfall
of StackOverflow.

~~~
drcube
Leaving it open is no big deal either. Or would _that_ be the downfall of SO?

~~~
tikhonj
With no or lax moderation, there's always the danger of becoming Reddit.

People come to StackOverflow because it has a good signal-to-noise ratio.
Maintaining this ratio, and the reputation of the site as a _resource_ rather
than a _discussion board_ is important.

I personally jump to StackOverflow results on Google pages because they almost
always solve my problem exactly. If the results start being polluted by a
bunch of less relevant discussions--which, being popular, are likely to rank
well--I would probably stop using SO results as much.

On top of this, just leaving a question like this open hurts the question
itself as well. There is no reason to want 100 different answers all pointing
out the missing space in different words! That way lies madness and Quora--
where many answers to popular "survey" questions only get read because of the
follow feature and a Facebook-esque machine-learning-based feed.

~~~
keammo1
This question, in fact seems, to have been flagged as getting posted on Reddit
(or maybe getting significant traffic from them?). I'm seeing this above the
answers:

"Welcome, Redditors! We're looking for answers that provide serious, practical
solutions to the problem stated. If you'd prefer to post a joke or launch a
tangential discussion, please do so on the corresponding Reddit thread."

------
VLM
Excellent, the source code equivalent of

[http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/](http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/)

which implies that about 99% of westerners walking around with Kanji tattoos
either have gibberish font (hilarious, read up about it) or think they have
some girls name but its actually "weeds / brush (vegetation) / wild grassland"

The concept that you'll look better with a foreign language phrase as part of
your skin is weird / mildly amusing all by itself, but the really funny part
is the execution is so often an epic fail. So you've got an illiterate foreign
language on your skin, not just a foreign language.

Given the apparently extreme popularity of the above genre, ridiculous source
code should fit right in.

~~~
jordan0day
I have a theory that foreign language tattoos (or code tattoos, for that
matter) arise mainly from a desire to have something (seemingly) unique
tattooed. That, and some signalling implying some hidden skill/knowledge that
the tattooed person must have.

The uniqueness bit is somewhat ironic, considering it's the thing that a large
part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well.

~~~
VLM
"considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to
do, as well"

I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not
having tattoos or piercings. From what I've seen of the general public, the
peer pressure on younger people must be immense to get tattoos / pierced.

~~~
jordan0day
> I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not
> having tattoos or piercings.

Ha. I love it!

"No tattoos or piercings? What are you, one of those straight-edge weirdos?"

"No, I'm just like, you know, a normal person."

~~~
VLM
Or, I'm a cop, or, I'm so poor I can't afford the tattoos they have.

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GuiA
I've noticed that quite a few American hackers have tattoos - at least way
more than the hackers from where I come from (France).

Is there any cultural significance to it? Does anyone have any good hacker
tattoo stories?

~~~
ctide
I have my username tattooed in binary on my arm:

[http://imageshar.es/52deec31f629007c14000e24](http://imageshar.es/52deec31f629007c14000e24)

~~~
PhearTheCeal
That's actually a pretty aesthetic pattern of 1's.

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Jun8
I thought this guy went too far, but no, it seems there are a lot of examples
of code
tattoos:[http://readwrite.com/2012/01/03/32_more_of_the_best_and_wors...](http://readwrite.com/2012/01/03/32_more_of_the_best_and_worst_tech_tattoos#awesm=~otCsrUoTC8IRhY)

Which begs the questions: which snippet is important/timeless enough to use
and, of course, which language. As the OP found out the hard way one should
use a Lang where whitespace doesn't matter.

Ideas?

~~~
user24
I wanted to get <?=phpinfo();?> on my arm once. The thought of what it would
output if run on a human still amuses me and if I had got it done, I don't
think I'd be sick of it now, even though I've not coded in PHP for 2 or 3
years.

~~~
jdiez17
Please don't get PHP tattooed on your arm.

~~~
user24
What about some VB?

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kintamanimatt
For once Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply because the answer is --
yes! At least it shouldn't be that difficult to laser off if he wants to redo
it!

------
aspensmonster
> put on hold as off-topic by FreshPrinceOfSO, Christian Payne, billinkc,
> ajma, Maxime Rouiller 23 mins ago

This is why StackExchange sites will die.

Or perhaps they're just being subtle:

"This question was caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced or a
simple typographical error...."

~~~
jonahx
Well, at least it's not a total loss, since the SO mods take great joy in
killing joy.

One wonders how they deal with the situation of their own joyfulness, because
it too should obviously be killed, but in order to do that they'd have to
unhold joyful and interesting questions, creating joy which itself
necessitates killing, and so on. Fork bomb.

~~~
kibibu
Not only that, there are many great and informative questions/answers that are
gone.

One of my favourites was "Most astonishing violation of the principle of least
astonishment", and the answers were a catalogue of how-not-to-build-software.
Examples of good behaviour are nice, but counter-examples are often just as
informative. Alas, it was "not a good fit for a QA"

------
lucb1e
> Welcome, Redditors! We're looking for answers that provide serious,
> practical solutions to the problem stated. If you'd prefer to post a joke or
> launch a tangential discussion, please do so on the corresponding Reddit
> thread.

Wrong, StackOverflow. I'm logged in with a years-old and couple thousand rep
account so I kind of know the rules, and no HN is not Reddit thank you very
much.

~~~
m_myers
The notice is playing the odds; it doesn't track referrers, and right now most
of the traffic is actually coming from Reddit
([http://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1vs4uu/have...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1vs4uu/have_i_tattooed_a_syntax_error_on_my_arm/)
to be precise). You might be surprised how many people with several thousand
rep points forget the rules when they've been on Reddit recently.

------
JimmaDaRustla
Syntax error or not, tattoo still seemingly dumb.

I figured it was going to be a forever loop or something...

~~~
pavel_lishin
Why is a non-terminating loop better than a fork bomb?

~~~
tinco
A fork bomb will quickly take up your systems resources and invariably will
force you to turn off your computer.

A non-terminating loop will simply drag on forever, stealing cycles whenever
it gets the chance.

~~~
Someone
Also: 1) an infinite loop will never use more than one CPU. Because of that,
on almost any hardware less than 10 years old, normal users might barely
notice an infinite loop that doesn't do I/O. A fork bomb, on the other hand,
will try and create 2*N processes after N iterations, all of them competing on
equal footing with your shell for CPU time and memory.

2) it is fairly easy to kill an infinite loop. Killing the explosion of
processes that a fork bomb creates is a different thing. Between the time that
you detect the process ID of a process to kill and the time you kill it, that
process may have spawned a few new processes.

More info at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb#Defusing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb#Defusing)

------
staunch
You broke the #1 rule of tattoos: only get one in a language you're proficient
in :-)

------
a3n
How come he didn't tattoo the failing unit test first?

~~~
ozh
At least the tattoo inker should have run some CLI tests first... duh. Can't
trust those people.

------
jonahx
Could someone break down how that fork bomb works? In particular, why is the
pipe and the background on one of the function calls needed to make it work?

~~~
m_myers
It recursively calls both itself and another copy of itself.
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/991142/how-does-this-
bash...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/991142/how-does-this-bash-fork-
bomb-work)

------
Crito
I wonder if a skilled plastic surgeon could re-arrange his skin to add space
between those characters and remove it on either side of the tattoo.

~~~
ansible
You could go the skin graft route, but that would be annoying.

IANAD, but if you tried to (gently) stretch the skin where you need the space
(like with some tape and sticks) then over a period of months you'd grow some
new skin in between. You don't want to stretch the skin too much too quickly,
or you'll get stretch marks (like some pregnant mothers do).

------
Pitarou
At least none of the letters were upside down. You should see some the
absolute travesties of Chinese character tattoos.

------
adamconroy
It pays to check these things before making a big commitment. Reminds me of a
girl I know who decided to change her first name by deed pole. She changed her
name to Pheonix rather than Phoenix.

------
yread
How is this question not blocked yet?

~~~
kintamanimatt
Because there's a definitive answer and it's reasonably free from opinion.

------
callesgg
ha Great story. It bugs the crap out of me is when bash stuff wont work in
more "modern" shells.

~~~
kibibu
This is the opposite, it works in zsh but not bash.

