back to article Lord Peter views the logfile

"What is design? Dorothy Sayers (English writer and dramatist - quoted by Brooks) suggests that design has three phases" - InfoQ reviewing Fred 'Mythical Man' Brook's latest tome. I had never realised that the famous crime writer Dorothy L Sayers was one of us - VS. The morning sunshine, filtered, as it were, through London's …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. BobtheBox

    .. an original by Robert Reid ..

    Oh my word - I am actually quite impressed, such historical accuracy was most unexpected...

    Now I have played several of his instruments and seven sharps is actually the correct key signature in modern terms. Now either you got lucky or your interests are as esoteric/nerdy as mine ..

  2. Brett Weaver
    Thumb Down

    I remember..

    Back when I was a kid and parents would try to pretend to be celebrities at the christmas party (I lived in a small town) I used to shudder with embarrassment. This article reminds me of such a time.

    1. BlueGreen

      MemB, TrapB ...

      ... HumourB.

      Meh.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Brilliant!

    Like Terry Pratchett, V.S. just keeps getting better and better, combining a deft hand in literary parody with a rapier thrust at whatever subject catches their gaze...

    Coffee was spluttered on keyboard over:

    'Funny sort of word, "holistic". Not in itself a bad word, but its presence in a sentence is a pretty good hint that all is not well'.

    I've always thought the same about "vibrant"...

    Coffee also met keyboard over singletons and doubled-checked locking (I'm a nerd) having been caught by this myself...

  4. Richard Jukes

    No BOFH...

    Not as good as a good BOFH but still quite entertaining, hats off to you m'lady!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    And the winner is...

    The winner of 'the most gratuitous inclusion of the term "vuvuzela" in a major literary work' is...

    The Stob!

    <APPLAUSE>

  6. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Bravo!

    Well done, Verity!

  7. Piers
    Happy

    NSFW...

    ...because I can't explain why it's so funny to my co workers. You either get it, or the other thing. Ms Stob, you would appear to be wasted on computers. However if your code is as good as this, I tremble in awe at the possibilities. I trust you always draft with a quill and ink?

  8. Mark McNeill
    Linux

    (untitled)

    "To look at the bland expression of polite interest on Wimsey's face, one would have garnered no clue that he belonged to one of England's great Unix families, who had never so much as knowingly used Internet Explorer, much less installed Windows."

    You've cheered my morning no end. Chapeau!

  9. jake Silver badge

    MCPS?

    ROFL!

    Ta, Stob :-)

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The use of volatile

    Unfortunately, throwing in "volatile" is unlikley to be the right solution

    http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2007/11/30/volatile-almost-useless-for-multi-threaded-programming/

    1. Kurt Guntheroth
      FAIL

      ruined by bad advice

      Right. "memory fences" would have been a correct answer. atomic<T> would have been. Volatile is an incorrect answer.

      The first 90% was so wonderful, that it was sad to see it end that way. I suppose VS will claim that Lord Peter gave the wrong advice intentionally because the lady was a windows zealot, but the intent wasn't clear to me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Gates Halo

        Wkki says ok

        "Double-checked locking can be implemented in Visual C++ 2005 if the pointer to the resource is declared with the C++ keyword volatile. Visual C++ 2005 guarantees that volatile variables will behave as fence instructions, as in J2SE 5.0, preventing both compiler and CPU arrangement of reads and writes with acquire semantics (for reads) and release semantics (for writes)" - from Wikipedia article on "Double-checked locking".

        Looks ok to me.

  11. davenewman
    Headmaster

    Norman French?

    programmaçion informatiq looks more like Catalan than Norman French.

    1. Albert Gonzalez
      Boffin

      Catalan translation

      In català would be either :

      a) A literal translation : Programació informàtica

      b) A literary translation: Creació de programari informàtic

      Truly yours , a catalan nerd.

  12. Martin
    Happy

    Brilliant!

    That is all.

  13. CD001

    Both...

    spectacular and fabulous - spectaculous?

    1. Rattus Rattus

      No, no -

      Fabular!

  14. George Nacht
    Go

    To loosely rephrase...

    ...the great Raymond Chandler: "I do not know, whether this is the best one I read, but I know that whoever wrote this, possess the ability to wrote the best!"

    No coffee over keyboard, but...actually...a few nostalgic tears here and there. For a minute I felt young again...Thank you.

    Now, where is the icon for applause?

  15. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    MCPS

    Chortle.

    It's that ear for the speech pattern. I could see Edward Petherbridge at work.

  16. Mike Morris
    Pint

    Pefect

    VS: 'Would I be correct in supposin'

    Perfect Lord Peter.Sayers would be proud.

  17. BlueGreen

    Arthur You Legend

    Fortunately wasn't Tea-ing up at the time.

    Great stuff.

  18. Reticulate

    More Work for the Debugger.

    Campion, having heavily-hinted royal connections, would have nothing to do with anything less than Multics (which ran happily on multi-processor -- and extremely expensive -- hardware).

    I hope the tinge of Wodehouse is a sign that the Author isn't going to become embarrassingly enamoured of her subject like her elder sisters in crime did.

  19. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Applause..

    .. your writing is evolving from damn good to spectacular!

  20. /dev/me
    Thumb Up

    Brilliant

    Thank you, Verity, this deserves a standing ovation.

  21. Big-nosed Pengie
    Thumb Up

    Most excellent1

    Three thumbs up,

    Wait a minute - that's not my thumb...

This topic is closed for new posts.