The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Erzengel — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:15:28 GMT

I just want to say: I hate when people fixate on the placeholder. Even when I make an inordinate effort to indicate "this is placeholder", people critique it anyway.

Reminds me of Duff's Device, a method for partially unrolling a loop. As a placeholder, the original example of the device simply set memory. So of course the commenters, being the Id-10-t errors that they are, fixated on this and asked, "Why not just use memcpy?". They completely ignored the clever pattern for partially unrolling a loop to make it more efficient in other contexts, and critiqued that one, single example. Do these people critique Hello World applications, too? (For example, why not just use "echo Hello World"?)

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Dave T — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:38:26 GMT

@mikeb, @Someone You Know

Hartman's Law of Prescriptive Retaliation:

Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Anonymous Coward — Thu, 13 May 2010 07:01:55 GMT

So let me get this straight... tomorrow we complain about this article, right?

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Cheong — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:25:45 GMT

@kog999: Or just that he's away when the article is posted, but still checking comments to see if someone's doing nit^H^H^Hpick-packet.

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

mikeb — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:14:11 GMT

>> used his physic powers to predict mikeb would make this comments

I don't think that Raymond was addressing my comment or maybe I'm just too far out of my depth to understand.

Anyway, it's apparent that Raymond does have psychic one-upsmanship powers in addition to his psychic debugging powers. An awesome and aweful (sic) combination for a thermonuclear threat.

I eagerly await Raymond's stock-picking psychic powers posts. But with my luck they'll be pre-recorded for posting after the events he might discuss...

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Gaspar — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:36:39 GMT

@kog999

As we all know, Raymond's blog is hosted from Russia, and in Soviet Russia, the comments monitor you!

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

hova — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:19:26 GMT

No, obviously the update cannon is sentient and peruses the comments.

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

kog999 — Wed, 12 May 2010 19:12:59 GMT

[Raymond is currently away; this message was pre-recorded.]

(Update: Who, according to one commenter, have no self-respect.)

This update would seem to indicate that Raymond is not currently away. Unless of course he used his physic powers to predict mikeb would make this comments and programmed a prerecorded update linked to his response.

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

mikeb — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:46:00 GMT

@Someone You Know:

Or the complete opposite... Bam!

re: The problem with setting up a story is that people focus on the set-up and miss the point of the story

Someone You Know — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:02:13 GMT

@mikeb

I wouldn't say you're so much "jumping the gun" as "missing the joke".