The Ker Kids decided that the only fair way to select the winner of the contest would be to write a computer program. So being clever little homeschoolers they just wrote up a quick program in QBASIC, tested it a few times and then ran it to discover who is the winner of the $20 Amazon gift card. Entrants were assigned a number based on the order of entry. Only one entry per person. There were a total of 26 eligible participants.
Using this program we have selected the winner and I even took a picture of the screen to show that no foul play was involved. But before I announce the winner I thought I should show you the QBASIC program so that any of you programmer-types could offer suggestions on improving the code:
CONTEST WINNER SELECTION PROGRAM
CLS
PRINT “How many contestants?”
INPUT contestants
x = INT(RND * contestants) + 1
IF x = 7 THEN PRINT “Sorry, Jim West is not one of the chosen. Try again.” ELSE
PRINT “The winner is…”
PRINT “Contestant number “; xPRINT “Congratulations!”
END
Look it over and tell me what you think. I’ll announce the winner soon.
Well, I’ll only like your computery solution if I’m the winner.
Well, I’ll only like your computery solution if I’m the winner and if it runs on both PC and Mac.
Well, I’ll only like your computery solution if you remove the offensive line which rigs the results in a most unpleasant and homeschoolerly way.
Sorry, it’s been a long time since I’ve done any programming. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Er, that would be this line:
IF x = 7 THEN PRINT “Sorry, Jim West is not one of the chosen. Try again.” ELSE
See it now?
Hmmm. How did that get in there? Maybe they have a grudge against homeschool-haters.
You need to start them young on Hungarian notation, data normalization, string externalization and message internationalization, or when they hit their teens, they might invent the next y2k bug. This program could easy run to the hundreds of lines, with just a little invaluable coaching from a real IT pro! They could also treat it as true IT project by tracking requirements from cradle to grave, Gantt Charting their anticipated completion dates of milestones on the critical path, and ensure that critical stakeholders are informed of opportunities for parallel development of ancillary tasks.
The key point in all this, though, is that when they were done Jim West would not leave incriminating comments on your blog after reading a line like:
IF isMember(arrReprobateCandidates, arrCandidates[lCandidateIdx]) THEN PRINT buildMessage(strLang,L_ERR_REPROBATE, arrCandidates[lCandidateIdx]) ELSE
Why don’t I have any friends?
codepoke, that is beautiful like a mad beat poet’s raving. and you have at least one friend because Lingy loves you.
Teach them to invent the next y2k bug, and hide it in code like codepoke’s sample, and they will have a job for life undoing the damage they have caused. Maybe that’s what codepoke meant in his “cradle to grave” sentence, which reminds me of Dilbert’s boss-speak.