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Friday, April 19, 2013

Believe in Magic

"Finding Neverland" is one of my favorite movies. Don't ask me why. I get a little choked up when the orphan kids are laughing at the play and thoroughly enjoying their free tickets to "Peter Pan".

But, that's just me.

Last month I wrote about how I don't seem to blog as much now that Facebook has become so ubiquitous. Every time I think of something to blog about my ever so slightly neurotic head takes over and I tell myself, "This may be more suitable for a Facebook status update". Of course, I don't update my status on Facebook either so it doesn't matter. But, it is a good excuse. At least I think it is.

It was on Facebook that a friend of mine posted a link to some kind of Dinosaur humor about computers. It was almost too much to read, but I made it through.


The part I am most interested in, of course, if the part that reads, "Soon you'll be staring at an obscure compiler error and no magic will be left in the world!"

This reminded me of the Peter Pan play where Tinker Bell says, "Every time someone says, 'I do not believe in fairies', somewhere there's a fairy that falls down dead." 

I can't help but think this comic is making people believe that the Computer Scientists of the world are destroying magic. This can't be further from the truth. Believe it or not I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science so I have some expertise in my next random goofy opinion.

I have yet to meet a quality programmer who doesn't pretend to believe in magic. We play the online role playing games (if it weren't for us no one would be playing World of Warcraft any more). We go to the renaissance festivals.We've all played Dungeons & Dragons and many of us still do. And we all sit back and try to levitate energy drink cans while trying to solve complex problems. We are also all adept at telepathically telling people to shut up.

I find this comic offensive in so many ways. We are all TOTALLY DOOMED!

Luckily, they posted a follow up comic which almost completely exonerates them. Every quality programmer I've met also believes in this. Of course, we don't talk about it without copious amounts of alcohol.