Okay, so I go to my Calc lab after an interim breakfast of yogurt (NOTE: Never again. No. Would not advise.) and it turns out we're doing this dinky little test run on a math program called Maple. Standard drill...run-through of functions and everything, how to plot graphs using this software, how to type in what it tells you and get it wrong, how to tear your hair out by the roots--the usual stuff. And then I get to this one part where I type in an equation and evaluate it for 2, and there, in the margin of the lab handout, is this:
#Note: Maple will give a nonsense output for this command.
Which really freaked me out. I mean, I got up at 8:00 (all my construction habits have gone out the window--8:00 is for SLEEPING, as far as I'm concerned, and my dad's schedules can stay dead and buried for all of me) to come to this lab, am trying to get acclimated to yet another math software program, and they're telling me that it gives NONSENSE outputs? Does it just have these wild whims? Sorry, Dave, I don't feel like computing that today. Why don't you get out your slide rule? Ha ha. *sound of bytes being reformatted into the binary equivalent of the finger* It should at least just say **SYNTAX ERROR** or something. Why toy with the emotions of some poor freshman? Maybe there's a sadism circuit in there somewhere.
To top it all off, the TA says that this "lab" is really bad prep for the next one, and that we probably need to read Lab 2 on our own before next Thursday. I just hope no one is basing their senior thesis on that software.
ADVISOR: Why does this printout say "Screw you, human" on it?
STUDENT: Oh, sorry, Dr. Jones. It was giving a lot of nonsense outputs today.
#Note: Maple will give a nonsense output for this command.
Which really freaked me out. I mean, I got up at 8:00 (all my construction habits have gone out the window--8:00 is for SLEEPING, as far as I'm concerned, and my dad's schedules can stay dead and buried for all of me) to come to this lab, am trying to get acclimated to yet another math software program, and they're telling me that it gives NONSENSE outputs? Does it just have these wild whims? Sorry, Dave, I don't feel like computing that today. Why don't you get out your slide rule? Ha ha. *sound of bytes being reformatted into the binary equivalent of the finger* It should at least just say **SYNTAX ERROR** or something. Why toy with the emotions of some poor freshman? Maybe there's a sadism circuit in there somewhere.
To top it all off, the TA says that this "lab" is really bad prep for the next one, and that we probably need to read Lab 2 on our own before next Thursday. I just hope no one is basing their senior thesis on that software.
ADVISOR: Why does this printout say "Screw you, human" on it?
STUDENT: Oh, sorry, Dr. Jones. It was giving a lot of nonsense outputs today.
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