Man of Honour
This is a fave of mine from years back I just got it sent to me in a mail so ill share, suppose a good few people already know it but here it is.
God as a Computer Programmer
Important Theological Questions that are Answered
If we Think of God as a Computer Programmer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to step through all those variables.
Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought He eliminated evil in one of the earlier versions.
Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but He is often amazed to find out what goes on in the daemon scripts.
Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages Him automatically and He logs on from home to try to bring it up.
Otherwise things can wait until tomorrow.
Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He did it in six days and nights while living on Jolt and candy bars. On the seventh day He went home and found out His
girlfriend had left Him.
Q: How come the Age of Miracles Ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project; now we are in
the maintenance phase.
Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.
Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so nontechnical people are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.
Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof.
Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape.
Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to recreate you. And searching those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will just say that the tape has been lost.
Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.
Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because He values elegance and simplicity, but then the users and managers demanded He tack all this senseless stuff onto it, and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.
Q: If I pray to God, will He listen?
A: You can waste His time telling Him what to do, or you can just get off His back and let Him code.
Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages, so just pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.
Q: Is God angry that Jesus was crucified?
A: Let's just say He's not going to any more meetings if He can help it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food turned out to be murder.
Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, or a date like your birthday.
Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive email.
Q: How can we interpret the Heisenberg Uncertainty Constant?
A: A manifestation of our machine's precision limit.
Q: What was Aramaic?
A: The original Higher Order MACRO Language.
Q: What does that make Ancient Hebrew?
A: Aramaic++
Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status, and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status, and resumes our execution. To us, things appear to change by magic.
Then this one, but think this one is none too good if you don't know programming.
THE PROGRAMMER'S QUICK GUIDE TO THE LANGUAGES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you're currently using. This handy reference is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such a dilemma.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.
C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "That's me, over there."
FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.
Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover you can't because your foot is of the wrong type.
COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.
LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...
FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.
Prolog: You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't permit it to explain it to you.
BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.
Visual Basic: You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have had so much fun doing it that you won't care.
HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.
Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.
APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.
SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.
Unix:
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm:.o no such file or directory
% ls
%
Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.
Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can, too.
Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.
Revelation: You're sure you're going to be able to shoot yourself in the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little bullet-thingies are for.
Assembler: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.
Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.
God as a Computer Programmer
Important Theological Questions that are Answered
If we Think of God as a Computer Programmer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Does God control everything that happens in my life?
A: He could if he used the debugger, but it's tedious to step through all those variables.
Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought He eliminated evil in one of the earlier versions.
Q: Does God know everything?
A: He likes to think so, but He is often amazed to find out what goes on in the daemon scripts.
Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages Him automatically and He logs on from home to try to bring it up.
Otherwise things can wait until tomorrow.
Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He did it in six days and nights while living on Jolt and candy bars. On the seventh day He went home and found out His
girlfriend had left Him.
Q: How come the Age of Miracles Ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project; now we are in
the maintenance phase.
Q: Will there be another Universe after the Big Bang?
A: A lot of people are drawing things on the white board, but personally, God doubts that it will ever be implemented.
Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so nontechnical people are scared of him. God thinks of him as irritating but irrelevant.
Q: What is the role of sinners?
A: Sinners are the people who find new and imaginative ways to mess up the system when God has made it idiot-proof.
Q: Where will I go after I die?
A: Onto a DAT tape.
Q: Will I be reincarnated?
A: Not unless there is a special need to recreate you. And searching those .tar files is a major hassle, so if there is a request for you, God will just say that the tape has been lost.
Q: Am I unique and special in the universe?
A: There are over 10,000 major university and corporate sites running exact duplicates of you in the present release version.
Q: What is the purpose of the universe?
A: God created it because He values elegance and simplicity, but then the users and managers demanded He tack all this senseless stuff onto it, and now everything is more complicated and expensive than ever.
Q: If I pray to God, will He listen?
A: You can waste His time telling Him what to do, or you can just get off His back and let Him code.
Q: What is the one true religion?
A: All systems have their advantages and disadvantages, so just pick the one that best suits your needs and don't let anyone put you down.
Q: Is God angry that Jesus was crucified?
A: Let's just say He's not going to any more meetings if He can help it, because that last one with the twelve managers and the food turned out to be murder.
Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, or a date like your birthday.
Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive email.
Q: How can we interpret the Heisenberg Uncertainty Constant?
A: A manifestation of our machine's precision limit.
Q: What was Aramaic?
A: The original Higher Order MACRO Language.
Q: What does that make Ancient Hebrew?
A: Aramaic++
Q: Why don't we see God at work?
A: God works at interrupt level. When He wants to do something, He suspends our processes, saves our registers and status, and swaps us out. Then He works His will on the world. Then He swaps us back in, restores our registers and status, and resumes our execution. To us, things appear to change by magic.
Then this one, but think this one is none too good if you don't know programming.
THE PROGRAMMER'S QUICK GUIDE TO THE LANGUAGES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you're currently using. This handy reference is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such a dilemma.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.
C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "That's me, over there."
FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.
Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover you can't because your foot is of the wrong type.
COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.
LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...
FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.
Prolog: You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't permit it to explain it to you.
BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.
Visual Basic: You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have had so much fun doing it that you won't care.
HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.
Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.
APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.
SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.
Unix:
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm:.o no such file or directory
% ls
%
Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.
Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can, too.
Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.
Revelation: You're sure you're going to be able to shoot yourself in the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little bullet-thingies are for.
Assembler: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.
Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.
