dessert toppings and floor waxen both agree

[deborah]

This exchange on twitter (via the Internet Archive for obvious reasons) made me laugh:

transcribed

Quoted Tweet from Zoë Schiffer (ZoeSchiffer):

Elon Musk is also asking for up 10 screenshots of the "most salient lines of code" from Twitter engineers

Quote tweet from Ed Zitron (edzitron):

anyone who understands coding (I do not): this is dumb right. This is a silly request? Why is it silly? please help me

Reply from Lemurdusa (lemurdank):

This is like asking a librarian for their favourite numbers in the dewy decimal system

Because I'm a librarian and a programmer, and yeah, my response to both questions is to look at you funny.

(As a programmer, because some of my best solo work isn't my lines of code, it's architecture of the system. And the lines of code I'm most proud of are either clever (clever code is often dangerous), or a convoluted and hideous hack to deal with a shitty system. Also who thinks of specific lines of code in complex systems? Probably any specific "salient lines of code" I could pick out are in silly personal side projects; half of what I write in a professional capacity is practically boilerplate. In the repository of all the lines of code ever written, the expertise of the programmer -- picking the right ones and putting them in order -- is what differentiates the programmer from GitHub Copilot.)

(As a librarian because, seriously, the Dewey Decimal System? Really? Library of Congress, obviously.)

(Also it's 398.2, obviously.)

Comments

[ayelle]

Neither a librarian nor a programmer, but I LOL'd at that last line.

[deborah]

Who knows any other DDS number by heart?

[shadowspar]

Oh ghod, I hadn't noticed at the time that he was asking for the 10 most salient lines of code. My brain just buzzed past that bit and assumed it was the 10 most salient code snippets.

Now I'm off thinking about what my 10 favourite lines of code might actually be, and picturing myself explaining them in the most self-important vocabulary I can muster. "You see, the bare return; statement is like the sound of one hand clapping...."