Today on
The Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor read a quote by Gustave Flaubert:
"I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it."
I thought this could use some amending for programmers:
I spent the morning putting in a parenthesis and the afternoon removing it.
Or for you SAS programmers:
I spent the morning putting in a semicolon and the afternoon removing it.
How about SQL:
I spent the morning putting in a column and the afternoon removing it.
Or if you write HTML:
I spent the morning putting in an escaped ampersand and the afternoon removing it.
Why not Python:
I spent the morning importing a library and the afternoon removing it.
Essentially, though, these all boil down to:
I spent the morning putting in (an) arbitrary character(s) and the afternoon removing it.
For all you programmers during this holiday season: May your parentheses be matched (your quotes too!), special characters escaped, and code executable on the first run.
