and what's worse is it was in the quiet car

January 8, 2013

and what’s worse is it was in the quiet car

last night i was riding the train and working on my laptop and the woman next to me taps me on my arm because i had my headphones in and presumably didn’t hear her say whatever she had just said to me, or idk maybe she didn’t bother saying anything at all in the first place because she saw i had headphones in and assumed i wouldn’t hear her, but regardless let’s hope there was at least the prospect of something having been said because why else would this lady just tap my arm uninvited? and anyway, “is that C++?” are the words she says to me, and i am immediately like “oh, fuck” (to myself, not out loud), because there’s probably no more terrifying question to have to field when you write code for a living then when someone asks you “is that C++?” because the thing about C++ is it’s a disgusting word salad of semicolons and parentheses and curly braces and anyone who has any business whatsoever asking another human being if the code on his screen is C++ can tell right away that it is quite clearly not C++. “no, it’s Ruby” i say, because no matter how much i want to tell this lady to go fuck herself that would be impolite of me, given that she had so politely tapped me on the arm to ask if Ruby was C++. “do you know anything about C++?” she follows up, and again i’m immediately like “oh, FUCK” (again, to myself) because this isn’t your parents asking what’s wrong with the router, this is an entirely different beast. “well it’s been about ten years since i used it, but sure,” i say, which was my first mistake, because then she tries to solicit advice for how to fix the bug in her 16-year-old son’s C++ homework assignment. “well there’s a dialog box in his console that won’t center. do you know what the problem could be?” and see, the thing is i know exactly what the problem is, he’s got to take half the width of the dialog box and subtract it from the width of the terminal and set that as the box’s x-axis position and then do the same for the y-axis, that’s his problem, but really the bigger problem here is that apparently everyone in the universe who doesn’t know anything about computers just assumes “person who knows about technology” is synonymous with “tech support representative” and it’s BEYOND annoying and in any event: don’t ever do this. don’t be this person.

3:06pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZpI0bybH-CYA

(Notes: 48)