TOT Gizzajob

[Clive George]

Yebbut you do seem to work at it. I wanted to avoid the impression that it would be a free lunch.

[Derek Geldard]

The success of a business seems to be like flying an aeroplane, either it climbs away to sunny realms above the clouds, or it goes down.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who will either take on a pub in this country at a time when the supermarkets are selling beer at 1/3rd of the price they can get it from the brewery, or alternatively decide with no training, no experience, no language skills to go and open a bar in Spain. These characters are on TV every second week, one couple I saw recently reckoned they thoroughly researched the market before opening a bar / bacon, egg & beans cafe in Benidorm. After all, they said they'd made a visit over there and looked at over 20 such cafes(run by failed English couples) for sale all on Benidorm sea front, and this one was the best.

Forgive me, but with 20+ duds for sale on one sea front wouldn't that seem to indicate a very difficult business environment with a near certainty of failure ?

Derek

[The Medway Handyman]

Ah.. I see. Don't you have to work at anything to make it viable? As I'm always telling aspiring magicians "the only place success comes before work is in a dictionary".

[Adrian]

Tim S gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Knuth? Who or what is Knuth?

Oh. Never heard of him...

[The Medway Handyman]

A panto star - Fairy Knuth....

I'll get me coat...

[Adrian]

"The Medway Handyman" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Oh, no, you won't.

[Tim S]

Adrian coughed up some electrons that declared:

The author of a series of computer science books in 1968 onwards that are as relevant today as they were then. Which is some achievement when you consider how computers normally radiate obscelence!

[Adrian]

Huge gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Yup.

Clue: I'm no software engineer. Never have been. Never wanted to be.

[Bob Eager]

Oh dear.

[Bob Eager]

[Looks lovingly at the trio of well thumbed volumes on the shelf beside him] (Knuth that is!)

[Adrian]

Huge gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

I'm very happy for you.

But I think you might find that was kinda my point. That "even" a CompSci degree doesn't necessarily provide the full toolkit for any specific role.

If I was a software engineer, then knowing Knuth would - clearly - be useful. I'm not. I've not written any code since I left Uni - and I avoided it as much as possible even then.

[Man at B&Q]

Which of the seven letters in the word "without" did you struggle with at school?

MBQ

[Adrian]

"Man at B&Q" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Just the last three, I suspect.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually I used to habve Knuths 'fundamental algorithms' Complete garbage. Sort of 1960 style 'this is what a computer is'.

I remember reading about 'co-routines' and wondering WTF he was on about. I finally figured it was a dumb theoreticians way of describing context switching. IIRC.

Anyway in all my time writing code, I cant say Knuth was ever useful at all.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. They weren't really relevant then, and they aren't now!

IMHO ;-)

Seriously, the books on software engineering were far more appropriate.

[Owain]

Erm. What did you write your dissertation with? Word?

Owain

[Owain]

Into latex, are you?

Owain

[Tim S]

The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

If you need a sorting algorithm or a funky tree algorithm to name but a few, Knuth is extremely useful IMO.

[Tim S]

Owain coughed up some electrons that declared:

SWMBO did her PhD thesis in LaTeX. It was harder to learn but a damn sight more stable than Word. I spent quite some time helping another friend recover the formatting on their PhD thesis in Word everytime it collapsed in a heap of crap.

LaTeX probably took nearly as much effort but it allowed the effort to be put in early rather than in a blind panic 30 minutes before a copy needed to be printed with revisions!

Personally, IME the print quality from LaTeX beats Word buy miles...

[Adrian]

Owain gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Bit further back than that. Can't remember what the word processor was called on the Atari ST - but, yes, my final year project did focus on the ergonomics of word processor user interfaces, as it happens. A lucky guess on your part, I suspect. Congratulations.