Computer programming books … Lol we don’t print them any more, they’d be obsolete before hitting the shelves.
Do be fair, that’s less because the fundamentals behind programming are changing and more because the specific implementations are changed all the damn time.
Yep, I got that “introduction to algorithms” (1100 pages tightly written, love it) and it still holds up ofc. I should have stayed in uni…
Programming: that book was printed a month ago, and it’s already obsolete.
Newspapers printed yesterday are already in the bin.
Tiktok posts last seconds before being discarded.
Mathematics teacher: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won’t pass.
Conflict of interest detected
This really happened?
I took an environmental science class in college, and the professor was a former president of Shell. As part of the curriculum, we had to read his book, Why we Hate the Oil Companies. Predictably, it’s a corporate non-apologia, which—hilariously—completely avoids engaging with why we actually hate the oil companies.
Did people stand up to call the bullshit? I guess in this kind of situation you feel threatened that if you talk, you get penalized heavily
Not that I recall. I didn’t know anyone else in the class, and I don’t remember anything coming up in the class group chat. I did get quite heated with him at a couple of points, but I’m pretty sure he still gave me an A.
environmental science class … the professor was a former president of Shell
Do they also invite Nazis to teach the elective in human rights?
Iirc, it was an energy/environment focus, so it was all about analyzing and comparing different energy sources wrt their usefulness, feasability, environmental impact, etc. This was in Houston, so the oil industry plays a huge role in the local economy, and funds the university endowments.
But yeah, the whole thing was pretty farcical.
Not the original commenter, but I briefly had one professor in college that did that (their book was $50, though). It was an elective course for me, fortunately. I was able to switch for a different class that fit the same requirement without being forced to buy a book the professor wrote.
I admit I exaggerated a bit. It hasn’t happened to me, but I’ve had some teachers that strongly suggested buying their textbooks and frowned if you didn’t.
Fucking disgusting behavior
Web development: Oh, that textbook is obsolete. It was written last year before Angular v18 was released.
*French SpongeBob voice
“2 hours later”
Laughs in PHP + HTML5 + CSS3 + Vanilla JS
Laughs about PHP
My condolences
Why? It is much better than Fortran, the Industry standard of programming languages!
Was just watching a kubernetes tutorial recorded a year ago, and the entire website / package repository it uses doesn’t exist anymore because modern devs can’t go six months without changing everything.
A colleague called it “Hype driven development” the other day and I have to say that describes it perfectly.
Whoops, 18.1 just released breaking changes
Meanwhile you can still get away with most of what you learned in Java 1.4.
As a kid I thought Pythagoras was silly for making a math cult. Now that I’m older I get it.
That’s an interesting angle on it, can you say more? Sorry to be obtuse.
Well Pythagoras lived during the Greek era. Buildings like the Temple of Artemis were the greatest projections of power and grandeur the world had to offer at the time. Those great structures would’ve dwarfed anything seen out in the country. The only way those buildings could ever be erected is with the help of mathematics.
Furthermore mathematical truths are about as true as anything can be in the world. A triangle’s angles are always perfectly in harmony for instance. Way back when, when the world was much darker and more chaotic, those mathematical truths must’ve seemed like a great light in the darkness.
Mathematics is applicable truth.
Oh that book is outdated. That’s the second edition, you need the third addition to complete the one math problem I am basing your entire grade on for the course.
“Why yes I do happen to also be the author of the textbook for this course, why do you ask?”
Theres a lovely scene in Star Trek where Picard is captured, then finds an exposed wire on the cell panel. He takes it and begins tapping out prime numbers, to show to the aliens’ mathematicians that they’re sentient and capable of thought, independent of language.
2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 39
39 is not a prime number
Out the airlock they go.
Wrong for physics. Models to describe reality don’t magically become wrong just because a model with better predictive power is discovered. Most old models are special cases of newer ones.
Yeah, Newton wasn’t just a science bitch who is wrong, sometimes. His equations are the special case of General Relativity when acceleration is very low. Which is the world we live in.
Science is validated by the new information replacing the old. Al-Khwarizmi worked out numbers so we don’t have to,
My favorite way to connect people with academia is pointing out how recently zero was invented because even the most reluctant “I don’t know math” person understands zero these days.
Can you really understand zero? I mean, I get what it represents, but I still sometimes struggle to understand its usage…like, you can’t divide with zero thats for sure, but did you know you can divide a number with a really small number (like an infinitely small number) and you get a really large number (like infinitely large)? So, in that special space, if you suddenly replace “0” with a “number-so-close-to-zero-it-can-smell-it” feel free to divide and conquer, and get infinity.
Oh, and sometimes, if you feel like math is letting you down, remember, you can always use positive and negative zeroes, so your math-thing can now work!
I don’t understand why you can’t divide by zero.
If you turn it into a word problem 10/1 could be stated as “If you have 10 things and put them in a bucket, how many things do you have in the bucket?”
10/2 becomes “If you have 10 things, and and put an equal amount of them in two different buckets, how many things are in each bucket?”
So, wouldn’t 10/0 become “If you have 10 things, and don’t put any of them into the bucket, how many things are in the bucket?”
I’m bad at math, go easy on me.
The fact that there’s no buckets means that you can’t then usefully draw any further conclusions about the ratio of buckets to things. In your first two examples we can take the results and use them to work out further things like how much might the buckets weigh, what happens if we add more buckets or more things, etc.
In the divide by zero answer, we know nothing about the buckets, and the number of things becomes meaningless. But worse of all is that it’s easy to hide this from the unwary, which is why you occasionally see “proofs” online that 1=2, which rely on hiding divide-by-zero operations behind some sneaky algebra.
When we say we “can’t” divide by zero, we mean ok you can divide by zero, but you’ll get a useless answer that leaves you at a mathematical dead end. Infinity isn’t reversible, or even strictly equal to itself.
I think I get it, thanks for taking the time to explain.
With 10/2 there are two buckets, and 10/1 there is 1, so with 10/0 I was wrong to phrase it as there is a ‘bucket with nothing in it’, it should be ‘there is no bucket, so you can’t put anything in the bucket, even if you wanted to.’ Right?
Reality: The universe was spontaneously created last thursday and there is no way for you to disprove it.
Nah mate, it was already in existence by last Tuesday afternoon and there is no way for you to disprove it.
Since you made the claim, the onus of proof is on you. Go on, it’ll be interesting to see your proof.
This was made by someone who doesn’t understand any of it.
It’s called a joke.
Very funny, I’m laughing so hard. So true /s
I can tell you are just the best of conversationalists, try to leave some charm and charisma for the rest of us.
Poor you. I will make sure I laugh next time. Don’t you worry.
So, what’s it like living up your own asshole?
Sorry, too busy waiting. Not laughing yet. Have you tried asking yourself that?
Physics books are never outdated, you just discover better models that work in a wider range of conditions.
I’m just wondering who’s using a physics textbook from before the Industrial Revolution.
Newton’s book is from before the industrial revolution and widely used in physics today.
Nothing I do need to account for relativistic speeds or quantum mechanics so I could get by on Newtonian mechanics just fine. Most people could get by on Archimedes.
We were taught highschool physics from a book published around 20 years before I was born
Easy as
I/II= ,V(OK, that was confusing, it’s
I/II= .Vin barbaric` )The really funny part is the other two are also just math.
The fabric of reality is woven from math, and that’s beautiful.
I’ve got a pet theory that a hypothetical alien species’ music would be more recognizably similar to humans’ than their biology would.
This could make the plot of a great sci-fi book. Love the idea.
Math is just applied logic. Logic is just applied philosophy. Philosophy is just applied bullshit.
philosophy is bullshit if you don’t take it seriously, at least.
Me using a needle and a steady hand and philosophy to shitpost over the horizon
