Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Complexity Theory Humor

Ah, the joys of outsourcing at http://www.getacoder.com/projects/bug_finder_92913.html. Read down to the bottom to find responses by Godel and Cantor...

Update -- someone at the site noticed and took down the original page (although it's still in the Google cache here.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Has the site been updated since you posted this? I can't find any responses by Godel or Cantor, just a naive response, one that points out the halting problem, and one that says "I think it is incredibly ignorant [sic] to post such a question with the purpose of mocking those who are not informed on Turing".

Michael Mitzenmacher said...

Yes they did change it! The old version is still in the Google cache (link now on the main post).

Anonymous said...

I agree with the person cited by Anonymous. So, there are tons of rent-a-coders who haven't heard of the halting problem. And this is supposed to be funny? Look, look at these idiots who aren't privileged enough to get a good university education. Come, let's all laugh at them together.

It's not in good taste.

Arvind Narayanan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Arvind Narayanan said...

The google cache version doesn't have the funny parts! Someone helpfully cached the full version here: http://www.wabdo.com/fred/bugfinder.html

I think it's perfectly ok to mock them, especially considering how bad some of the responses are. Both because if you haven't heard of the halting problem you shouldn't be writing code for a living, and because if you claim to understand the specifications when you clearly haven't done so, you're a liar.