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[Mikademus]

Share lulz from entertaining technical questions in this topic.

A beginner programmer asked the other day on a graphics library forum if anyone knew how to detect patterns on the screen. After having been told that generic pattern analysis and recognition is a rather difficult topic another beginner followed up with that he too was interested in this and wondered if anyone had any code to share.

[rivon]

What's so funny about it?

[Mikademus]

Well, it was a very naïve question, and when pointed out that it is an NP-difficult problem and that there are entire universities dedicated to researching the field another happy newbie in a gigantic facepalm moment asks if someone has some (easy and copypastable) code to share. Perhaps I didn't describe it very well.

[rivon]

Yeah, I guess so. Now it's more understandable.

[Falmil]

Via The Daily WTF:

    Being a programmer and the only computer literate person in my family, I get tech support calls from my family all the time. I got a phone call from a brother-in-law today:

        Him: Hey, you're good with computers right?

        Me: Yes.

        Him: And you know how to program computers?

        Me: Yes, that's my job actually.

        Him: Could you explain programming please?

        Me: I'm sorry, what do you mean?

        Him: I want to make a game like Halo, but I don't know how to start. Could you explain what I need to do?

        Me: You should probably go to the library and get a book.

        Him: Can you just tell me what I need to do?

        Me: Wait a minute. Are you asking me to explain how to program computers?

        Him: Yeah.

        Me: Over the phone?

        Him: Yeah.

    My brother in law apparently made several unsuccessful attempt to "learn programming" by opening up exes in Notepad. He created a text file with the words "Morph the screen into something cool" and couldn't figure out how to run it, even had the balls to ask me "how do I install my program? Do I just put a shortcut on the desktop".

    My dad, a programmer, lent him an unfortunately titled book called "Teach Yourself Java in 24 hours". He immediately flipped to the back of the book and reading sections on server and Swing development, and was very excited to see that he could write his own server after just one day.

    In the end, I was unable to teach my brother in law how to make his own Halo over the phone, and he decided that I wasn't a very good programmer.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Could-You-Explain-Programming-Please.aspx

[JMickle]

That reminds me of when I was really young and my brother had just installed Visual C++, and I said "Cool does that mean we can make Quake??"

[Klaim]

It's too easy to extract Daily WTF articles.

[PompiPompi]

I remember that me and my friend wanted to make games, so my father told me "sure start working on it". So we started by typing like:
1. Game with car that shoot missles
2. fighting game
3. etc etc.
We might have been more creative than I am now. But after we typed in a list of about 7 games, we called my father so he could "program the games for us".
Heh

[nospoon]

A beginner programmer asked the other day on a graphics library forum if anyone knew how to detect patterns on the screen. After having been told that generic pattern analysis and recognition is a rather difficult topic another beginner followed up with that he too was interested in this and wondered if anyone had any code to share.

Wait... wasn't OpenCV a lib for this?

[Falmil]

It's too easy to extract Daily WTF articles.

That is the only game related one I am aware of.

[Danmark]

This is from I Get Your Fail:

Customer:
For the next release you could add a realtime shadow by simple adding a lightsource.
If you want to know how to do this please call me.
Tel.: XXXXXXXXXXXX

Bye XXXXXXX


Reply:
Hi XXXXXXX,

It's a bit more complicated than that. We want to do it for 2.0 release, but that's not 100% certain. Currently you can do shadows using a blob-shadow, or bake your shadows into a texture...

Thanks for the offer of assistance in any case.


Customer again:
Here an example how to create realtimeshadows:

rayhitssurfce()
{
if (ray.isfirsttime)
lightensurface();
else
darkensurface();
}

I hope somebody in your team knows what I mean with this. If not then you can contact me at the telephone number below.

I hope this will help you to create realtimeshadows. (I would like to use them)

Bye XXXXXXX

[pgil]

Not a question, but this summer I mentioned to my brother I was learning As3... He told me "Hey, I've worked with Flash!  I have some books you should read..." 

Now I own 3 books on Macromedia Flash 5