Oh no this isn’t it, this is extremely basic. As a programmer you will encounter way way more complex logic problems, so logic problems become 2nd nature. And it can be frustrating when “normies” don’t understand what appear to a programmer to be a matter of pretty simple logic thinking.
As a “normie” I’d never assume to understand even the most basic of programming. My head hurts to even try and come up with a joke involving the subject.
Because it’s the same? Or because it’s very different?
My wife was a professional musician for a few years.
PS:
Do you get this joke?
The wife sends the man for shopping and asks him to buy 1 liter milk and if they have eggs buy 12.
When he comes home, she looks at him astonished, why did you buy 12 liters of milk?
Because they had eggs he responds.
Ahh. Makes sense that it can be automated. Same as with audio engineering. Though I like to normalize by hand sometimes as automated normalization tends to make a track sound lifeless and dead.
Not just someone. It’s the default when numbers are in text strings, they are treated as text, not as numerical values.
To account for numbers in text strings in any text listing system, requires quite a bit of extra work when programming it.
So the joke is that computers are pretty dumb in this regard, and they need a lot of help to do it right.
Basic sorting is always like this, the joke is that way too many people still number things badly. Alphanumerically sorting variable-length numbers without normalizing the number of digits will always result in situations like 02 < 1 < 109 < 11 < 2
Indeed! That kind of scale-sensitive value-based sort requires the data to be invariant in other ways, though. For example, “Episode Three” has 13 charachters, so it would come after “Episode Four” which only has 12 and therefore must be smaller.
Turns out that sorting things is way more complicated than it seems. The wikipedia page on sorting algorithms in computer science lists 37 different ways to sort numbers and it is far from an exhaustive list.
I found it especially overblown since I ran into a very similar issue recently. I actually laughed at myself when I saw the mangled list and fixed the names (it helped that the list was something I generated with a script and adding leading zeroes was a simple matter).
It’s sorted alphabetically. All the numbers that start with “1” come first, then all the numbers that start with “2”, regardless of how long the actual number is.
Fair point, but how does it reconcile that 11 and 12 comes before 2?
(Admittedly, I know nothing at all about this stuff. I’m a music major and I went all in on that, so I’m genuinely curious)
it doesn’t, it reconciles that 02 comes before 11
Ahhh. Because it’s alphabetical? Like how “eleven” comes before “two” alphabetically?
yeah
Filenames are text, not numbers, so 11 comes before 2. So does 111, 101, etc. Anything starting with 1 is before 2.
In order to sort “properly”, you have to name your files properly.
00
01
02
up to…
99
If you have more than 100 files in the same folder, the you have to go back through and re-name them:
000
001
002
… 099
100
I’m starting to understand why programmers are always so angry…
Oh no this isn’t it, this is extremely basic. As a programmer you will encounter way way more complex logic problems, so logic problems become 2nd nature. And it can be frustrating when “normies” don’t understand what appear to a programmer to be a matter of pretty simple logic thinking.
As a “normie” I’d never assume to understand even the most basic of programming. My head hurts to even try and come up with a joke involving the subject.
It’s so nice we have people like you, that allows us to feel superior, even if we are inferior in every other way imaginable. 👍
Try being a music major.
Because it’s the same? Or because it’s very different?
My wife was a professional musician for a few years.
PS:
Do you get this joke?
The wife sends the man for shopping and asks him to buy 1 liter milk and if they have eggs buy 12.
When he comes home, she looks at him astonished, why did you buy 12 liters of milk?
Because they had eggs he responds.
I do get that joke, but that’s probably because I’m of the ASD persuasion.
It’s also why stuff like this exists:
https://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/
Ahh. Makes sense that it can be automated. Same as with audio engineering. Though I like to normalize by hand sometimes as automated normalization tends to make a track sound lifeless and dead.
A Perl program to convert the number of digits in the first numeric field that appears in a list of filenames.
source
Looks something like:
In alphabetical sorting 11 comes before 2 For the same reason AA is before B.
So that’s the joke then? That someone chose to alphabetically sort numbers?
The joke is that computers work this way, and it’s aggravating.
Not just someone. It’s the default when numbers are in text strings, they are treated as text, not as numerical values.
To account for numbers in text strings in any text listing system, requires quite a bit of extra work when programming it.
So the joke is that computers are pretty dumb in this regard, and they need a lot of help to do it right.
Basic sorting is always like this, the joke is that way too many people still number things badly. Alphanumerically sorting variable-length numbers without normalizing the number of digits will always result in situations like 02 < 1 < 109 < 11 < 2
I’m assuming that normalizing digits is similar to normalizing audio? Where you take the numbers and assigning them all a blanket set of instructions?
Normalization in mixing audio essentially takes a track and adjusts the volume of the track’s peaks to keep them from clipping the volume threshold.
Is it like this?
Yeah! In general, Normalization refers to adjusting values measured on different scales to a common scale.
Consider 1 and 10. The value of the first digit of both numbers is 1, so a scale-invariant numerical sort sees both numbers as coming before 2.
Normalizing both numbers to a two digit scale gives us 01 and 10, which sort as expected with 02.
Ahhh. So you have automated processes that will handle it as well. Just plug in the ranges and it does its thing.
Indeed! That kind of scale-sensitive value-based sort requires the data to be invariant in other ways, though. For example, “Episode Three” has 13 charachters, so it would come after “Episode Four” which only has 12 and therefore must be smaller.
Turns out that sorting things is way more complicated than it seems. The wikipedia page on sorting algorithms in computer science lists 37 different ways to sort numbers and it is far from an exhaustive list.
Seems like programming isn’t too dissimilar to giving a child instructions.
Wow. Reply guy party.
deleted by creator
Being computer illiterate makes you angry, I guess?
Me? Not at all. Unless you meant the comic strip thing, then yeah. I suppose I could see that.
Being bad at a lot of things doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m good at other things. And some of those things, I’m even great at!
No, I did not mean you.
I found it especially overblown since I ran into a very similar issue recently. I actually laughed at myself when I saw the mangled list and fixed the names (it helped that the list was something I generated with a script and adding leading zeroes was a simple matter).
It’s sorted alphabetically. All the numbers that start with “1” come first, then all the numbers that start with “2”, regardless of how long the actual number is.