Coding with the pope: Catholic school children are going to be tempted to learn to code with the Pope. Or the pope is going to tell them to learn to code, cause that is what God wants? One imagines it will be a bigger draw in catholic countries, not so much in the rest of the world. Unless the program is really good and can be used by heathens and heretics to.
Apparently the Pope, or God or some other earthly minion picked Python. What does that tell us ...
Mr Mironiuk will meet the Pope at the Vatican. But he admits he's not anticipating the pontiff to emulate his students in acquiring new skills.
"I don't expect him to know Python very well, at least," he said. "But he will get a certificate for his efforts in helping start the programme."
So the pope isn't working on his own backup- or retirement career then. It's more of a do as I say, not do as I do. Or don't.
So what is next? A coder Saint? Some kind of coding miracles? Coding with Jesus? Coding for Allah?
Who hasn't said a little prayer, or an endless stream of profanity, when you hit the compile button, hoping it will run this time without to many or any errors?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67209806
https://www.codewithpope.com/
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2023, @08:31AM (7 children)
Prayers are more for that hardware stuff which I don't have as much control over. e.g. a new video card/HDD. Plug all the required cables in, hope it work... But sometimes it doesn't work.
As for what's software and hardware. It's mostly all software nowadays, just a matter of who is doing it and at what level. 😉
Software = stuff you hack
Hardware = stuff you leave to other people to hack.
So servers/routers/firewalls/switches could be hardware to some CEO, but software to me.
Whereas CPUs/HDDs/keyboards could be hardware to me but software to those who do the microcode/firmware stuff.
p.s. So is Python more of the "snake on a pole" and less the serpent in the Garden? 😉
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 06 2023, @03:15PM
Python is the snake on a pole for me. It's helped me deal with stuff I either wouldn't have been able to deal with otherwise or needed to do manually. Screw manually, if at all possible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @03:19PM (5 children)
<no-sarcasm>
Back in ancient times, in a past millennium, swept away in the sands of time, our ancient ancestors referred to that as "plug and pray".
</no-sarcasm>
"stuff which I don't have as much control over" describes software in general. Like if the software instructor in the parish hardcodes certain holy dates into the software, you would just have to patch the compiled binary later on rather than admit that a mistake had happened. The resulting invisible undocumented fix is simply explained as a miracle. The programmer who produces the unexplainable miracle receives a special blessing.
From Numbers 21: [biblegateway.com]
So the lessen is not to make coding errors which incur the wrath of such a transgression. Indentation errors earn a special kind of wrath.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday November 06 2023, @04:02PM (3 children)
You beat me to the "plug and pray" reference. I live on the west coast of North America, so I'm just having my coffee.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2023, @04:11PM (2 children)
Plug and Pray and Plug and Play and Plug and Pay etc...
That sort of thing...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @05:26PM (1 child)
I had never heard of the Plug and Pay. So thank you!
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday November 07 2023, @09:48PM
We have carparks that are Pay With Dismay.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Tuesday November 07 2023, @10:54AM
You forgot the most important verses:
May we all continue on to Beer, as the Lord has ordained it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by pTamok on Monday November 06 2023, @08:40AM
The patron saint for computing and Internet technology related stuff is St. Isidore of Seville. He probably gets AI as well, and I'm sure he'll intercede [wikipedia.org] in matters of programming as well.
Catholicism.org: Patron Saint for the Internet, Isidore of Seville [catholicism.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by BsAtHome on Monday November 06 2023, @09:22AM (5 children)
The new religion:
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 06 2023, @10:18AM (1 child)
Random Numbers and Sin:
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin" - John von Neumann
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @03:25PM
They probably simply want to ensure a certain outcome. Such as assurance of salvation. Otherwise one finds oneself in that other place which only gets internet service from Comcast, your only system is PC compatible with Windows 3.1, and Usenet only has one newsgroup: comp.alt.soc.rec.news.sci.talk.misc.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 06 2023, @01:02PM (1 child)
You didn't mention that the Book of Life is binary, but only uses 1s. 0s don't get recorded.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @03:34PM
Do the zeros get blotted out of the book of life? Exodus 32:32-33. [biblegateway.com] Psalm 69:28 [biblegateway.com] Revelation 3:5 [biblegateway.com]
Maybe a filter is used to remove the zeros leaving only ones.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday November 06 2023, @04:19PM
And from an ethical perspecive [sqlite.org], be conscientious and upright and don't cut corners [sqlite.org] when testing. But then again, I'm not an ethicist [youtu.be].
(Score: 5, Funny) by crafoo on Monday November 06 2023, @11:41AM
They didn't choose TempleOS using HolyC? Oh well. Terry's explanation of a bird puzzling over what's on the monitor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlV9GvzRFs0 [youtube.com]
HolyC has some neat features. Especially for it's time. https://harrison.totty.dev/p/a-lang-design-analysis-of-holyc [totty.dev]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 06 2023, @12:35PM (6 children)
This really is a two direction story.
Going in one direction, analog and RF EE stuff needs prayer more than writing fizzbuzz in Python.
Going the other direction, this is your classic distractor, ignore what we're doing and saying, everybody look "over there", see, we're doing some trendy nonsense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Monday November 06 2023, @04:11PM (5 children)
Why is every pro-coder organization ignoring kids becoming familiar with spreadsheets, which is a real, universal skill with optional programming elements? Maybe because once you can visually assemble where the money is coming in and going out [youtu.be], possibly even via a crowdsourced shared spreadsheet, well ... who knows what you'll find?
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday November 06 2023, @04:18PM (3 children)
Python is a west coast fetish, spreadsheets are east coast.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @05:34PM (1 child)
The first spreadsheet, VisiCalc, was on the Apple II. That's pretty West Coast.
VisiCalc's initial exclusivity on the Apple II is credited as a significant factor in Apple's early huge success becoming a big company.
Middle managers in big corporations could, within their own budget authority, buy a nice Apple II system with dual floppy drives and VisiCalc and put it on their desk. No getting the mainframe people involved with installing a terminal. No waiting on the union people who were required even if you simply wanted to move that terminal from one part of your desk to another. No dealing with the high priests in white robes behind the glass walls of the computer room.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 07 2023, @12:35PM
Also a long time ago, what three, four human generations of business people? That was like written by and for WWII generation when the boomers were still working their first job at that brand new McDonalds restaurant.
The fetish now in the 2020s on the west coast is Python, anyway.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Monday November 06 2023, @05:35PM
I think Excel now has MicroPython.
The Centauri traded Earth jump gate technology in exchange for our superior hair mousse formulas.
(Score: 4, Funny) by hendrikboom on Monday November 06 2023, @04:44PM
See Mail Merge as a First Programming Language [acm.org] for another take on what to start with.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 06 2023, @01:58PM
Here's the first lesson [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday November 06 2023, @05:31PM
I guess someone has a sense of humour, given the role of the serpent in Genesis.
Getting good Catholic schoolchildren to program in the language of the serpent sounds 'interesting'.
Perhaps they should have chosen Perl (Matthew 13, 45-46), or maybe the Mormons had first dibs on that: A Perl of Great Price.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday November 06 2023, @07:16PM
Once upon a time, this divine code was a pure oneliner. That's not possible anymore. So much for the evolution of the snake...
Fun history fact: I was banned on Slashdot more than dozens of years ago for posting an ancient version of this innocent jewel.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by gznork26 on Monday November 06 2023, @09:23PM (1 child)
I suppose someone who's read Clarke will have to join the program just to write a Python program that enumerates the 9 billion names of god. When the loop finally ends, all the stars will start to go out.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday November 07 2023, @08:46PM
Funny you should mention that [space.com].
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].