Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? (2003)

https://vole.wtf/coder-serial-killer-quiz/

by bagpuss • 3 years ago

309 138 3 years ago

vole.wtf

nomaxx117• 3 years ago

This is great fun. Even if it's mostly a 50/50 guessing game it's still quite humorous.

anigbrowl2• 3 years ago

I scored 9/10 and 'true crime' is not an especial interest of mine, I didn't recognize anyone's photos.

* HMU if you want to screen new hires/potential business partners, no refunds

Wowfunhappy• 3 years ago

no refunds

If you get it wrong and they hire a serial killer... well, I don't think this policy will be necessary.

quickthrower23• 3 years ago

Self selected p-hack

swader999• 3 years ago

Don't ever pick me for jury duty.

pharrington• 3 years ago

"Established much of the design of COBOL in two weeks"

that still doesn't answer the question??

visarga• 3 years ago

That answers the question why is COBOL so weird. Just like JS, invented in a week, fixed for the next 3 decades.

keyle• 3 years ago

I'd take COBOL over JS back in 1997!

zelphirkalt• 3 years ago

The real question is how many lives were lost, because of COBOL and as such can be indirectly attributed.

casion• 3 years ago

Heh, I knew all the names by the photo... maybe I should leave the house one day.

jansan2• 3 years ago

All names of both categories? Maybe you should stay inside a little longer.

RajT88• 3 years ago

Is there one with file system inventors or murderers?

gabereiser2• 3 years ago

Double Bonus Points for ReiserFS right?

yowzadave• 3 years ago

I like this because I like to flatter myself that I have a good intuition about people after seeing them, and this shows that I’m completely wrong about that—barely better than random.

Macha• 3 years ago

It turns out with the trappings of how serial killers are presented in media (bad black and white photos from odd angles), everyone looks like a serial killer.

jeffparsons2• 3 years ago

There's a security camera monitor displayed prominently in one store near where I live that makes everyone look dodgy — something about the frame rate and fuzzy image just looks like shoplifting footage you'd see on the news.

I see myself on the screen as I enter and think "yeah, that guy's going to hold up the shop or something".

NikkiA• 3 years ago

Plus the whole website primes you to think that you're about to be presented serial killers.

You could do a 'serial killer or ...' about anyone whose prime was between 1950 and 1970-some and has a lot of mostly B&W photos.

eru4• 3 years ago

I was way worse than random. Make of that what you will.

eterm• 3 years ago

Unless you scored 0 or 1, then you might not be "way worse than random", or at least, there is a lack evidence that you are "way worse than random":

2/10 has a p-value of p = .057.

Or put another way, the 95% confidence interval of scoring 2 out of 10 covers 0.5.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

In a binary result you almost can’t be worse than random. If you’re worse, then invert your result and you’re good again.

Or as in Seinfeld, when George just decides to do the opposite thing he would normally do and things start going well for him.

sn41• 3 years ago

Probably you are still right. Seeing a photograph is different from seeing a person in real animated life. I guess there are micro expressions, the way people laugh, and the exact point at which people laugh and such that some people are really good at reading, but it is hard to articulate what exactly the process of interpretation is.

bryanrasmussen• 3 years ago

I think you're right, if someone is laughing while chopping up a corpse there's a good chance they're a serial killer.

muzani3• 3 years ago

Like Chris Watts was investigated and arrested for behaving a little off about his family's disappearance.

quickthrower23• 3 years ago

Serial killers. By definition have aptitude to get away with murder for some period of time. Probably good at concealing their madness.

hutzlibu3• 3 years ago

Well, I think so, too. But only after seeing them in real and not just on some blurry, distorted picture.

But I also think, most people have the potential to become serial killers. Hunting and killing is deep in our genes after all and society can mess up people pretty bad, so some turn their animal instinct against society, while maintaining the facade on the outside.

tux33• 3 years ago

I don't think that's right.

In psychiatry, you reach the coveted status of Antisocial Personality Disorder (the remorseless manipulative sociopath with a charming personality, but no compassion) by starting out with Conduct Disorder (the kids that hurt animals, lie, cheat, and steal) and not snapping out of it by adulthood

Humans are social animals. If your animal instinct is hunting and killing, and you feel like you're just maintaining a facade... good! You don't choose the instincts you're born with, but please keep maintening the facade thank you! :)

kunley• 3 years ago

GvR !! ;)))

atleastoptimal• 3 years ago

Making a programming language prone to bugs/frustrating to work with makes one possibly a stochastic serial killer

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

I mean instead of killing entire people, what if you kill a small fraction of thousands of people?

arthurcolle• 3 years ago

That's how SaaS pricing was invented!

fud101• 3 years ago

do you really mean it bro?

1letterunixname• 3 years ago

Liveness data flow analysis is just a phase a compiler and JITs go through. They'll eventually cease murdering heap and stack values once they've decided to halt. Unfortunately, they use a disposable Erlang distribution Schrödinger cat box to make each decision. Not sure what they do with all the no-longer-cats or what sort of sensor detects ex-cats.

Schrödinger couldn't just invent a cyanide sensor. He was definitely a psychopathic serial killer in addition to being a serial pedophile (this bit is true).

ericls• 3 years ago

At least I got guido right…

pteraspidomorph• 3 years ago

9/10. Sorry, Guido, I knew those were the dead eyes of a programming language inventor but I still decided to go with serial killer.

lukeinator42• 3 years ago

I got the same score for the same reason, haha

cutemonster• 3 years ago

I got 8, ... The old lady, was 50-50? How could one know if she was one of the spaceship programmers but at old age? But now I realize, the photo looked old too, so then logically she couldn't have been one of them after all :-)

mabbo• 3 years ago

I got 9/10 (sorry Sussman!).

In a previous version of this game on another site, Phil Wadler was one of the computer scientists and I was able to say "I've met that one! I hope he's not a serial killer..."

debtless4080• 3 years ago

10/10

Nevermark• 3 years ago

Isn’t a shotgun murderer a … parallel killer?

gabereiser2• 3 years ago

Not if you await the first shot…

secf4ult• 3 years ago

You cannot await in top level, unless...

jp57• 3 years ago

Why not both?

armchairhacker• 3 years ago

Correction: programming language inventor or convicted serial killer

seanmcdirmid• 3 years ago

Or doesn’t exclude and.

avodonosov2• 3 years ago

known programmer language inventor

(some of the maniacs could have secretly designed prograrming languages too)

h2odragon• 3 years ago

Just because they maniacs and did bad things, should we name their private shames too?

nneonneo• 3 years ago

Aka, hacker or ‘hacker’.

I feel like with enough photos of just about anyone, you’ll eventually get one that makes them look sinister…

Jigsy4• 3 years ago

2/10.

Surprised that Hans Reiser wasn't on the list. (Or I didn't see him.)

bagels• 3 years ago

That one is a trick question if sorts.

Jigsy4• 3 years ago

Personally I think of him as a murderer first and a programmer second.

sneak• 3 years ago

Nope; he wrote a file system, not a programming language.

djmips• 3 years ago

wow you are almost exactly backwards. do you hate language inventors?

Jigsy4• 3 years ago

Not really. I just assumed nearly everyone was a programmer.

"Wow, what a sweet old lady. I'm guessing she invented Fortra-- oh, she, murdered people for their social security checks."

naniwaduni2• 3 years ago

As far as we're aware, he doesn't belong to either category (yet).

Jigsy4• 3 years ago

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

I keep forgetting he killed just his wife, not his kids as well.

jdjdjdjdjduuuu• 3 years ago

7/10

derefr• 3 years ago

Deeper question: why is Sussman wearing a fez in that photo?

ufo• 3 years ago

"We're getting really close to the spirit of the computer at this point, so I have to show a certain amount of reverence and respect"

https://youtu.be/aAlR3cezPJg?list=PLE18841CABEA24090&t=234

neilv4• 3 years ago

I know it's a silly game, but I'm slightly uneasy with it.

If you remember a time when programming computers was considered nerdy, in a socially discouraged and mocked kind of way (until it became big money)... a game of guessing whether a photo is of a serial killer or a computer programming nerd... might seem a little abusive.

an_aparallel• 3 years ago

kind of agree - its the same "humour" which devolved TV like big bang theory into canned laughter shit-shows - poking fun of "virgin nerds" (which make bank).

neilv4• 3 years ago

And worse. When, say, GvR was a kid, it was normal in many schools for nerds to be bullied.

Imagine someone doing this game back then, in that context, passing it around school (before cyberbullying), and it'd be pretty nasty.

We can say "but computer programming is OK, now that it's a status career that rich kids have blessed as cool, and kids don't get bullied like that in school so much, so now it's funny in a non-bullying way", I guess.

Still feels like punching-down, to me, but not everyone knows the earlier context.

joelegner• 3 years ago

Another interpretation is that the portraits communicate essentially zero information about the subject. No information means no way to differentiate beyond the absolute basic facts: male, age such and such, seems to be wearing western clothes, things like that. No information means no way to shade probabilities. You might as well flip a coin.

Or this way: Serial killers look like random people, just as programming language inventors look like random people.

neilv4• 3 years ago

If that were the goal, wouldn't a diversity of obviously nigh-saintly people in the mix... be better than focusing on a historically maligned group?

TylerLives• 3 years ago

Facial asymmetry, testosterone (thick eyebrows, baldness), weight, piercings, tattoos, unnatural hair colors etc. surely have some correlation with being a serial killer?

jhbadger• 3 years ago

Particularly since some of the photos of programming language designers seem to be particularly unflattering ones.

PheonixPharts• 3 years ago

I'm just glad the game isn't "File system creator or killer"

Stratoscope• 3 years ago

That was my first thought too!

OTOH, wouldn't it be "File system creator and killer"? :-(

mongol• 3 years ago

I agree. I don't think it is good taste to use people's photos in a game and let players guess if they have killed someone.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

Yeah I had this exact tinge of unease when the game started but I couldn’t really identify where it emerged from. I think you nailed it on the head.

emfax• 3 years ago

I agree with this sentiment, but I’ve always wondered about a person’s face or appearance and how that might correlate to other traits.

I think we could all agree that a person’s face might indicate ‘shiftiness’ or ‘meanness’ and that there is a decent probability that you’d be right in your assessment.

Has there ever been studies that correlate face types with personality traits?

neilv4• 3 years ago

I've heard of various bits of pseudoscience around that, including in eugenics and criminology.

One of the times, it escalated to genocide, and the people who committed that are widely known to history as the epitome of evil. They were trying to characterize and identify "lesser" people, and it turned out they themselves will be known forever as the worst of humanity.

There's some curious questions (e.g., why do so many overtly mean people we've seen look mean). But I suggest being careful with this space, and skeptical of people who are motivated to pursue it and those they attract.

eat_veggies• 3 years ago

It's an attractive idea that the surface of one's body can tell you something about its inner truth, but it's incorrect. The field is called physiognomy, which is a pseudoscience that's been the basis of scientific racism and eugenic programs.

Some names you can look up are Johann Lavater, as well as Alphonse Bertillon, inventor of the mugshot, and Francis Galton, inventor of composite portraiture.

umanwizard• 3 years ago

a time when programming computers was considered nerdy, in a socially discouraged and mocked kind of way

This is still true, regardless of the money.

ganglandfee• 3 years ago

Well, all I learned is that I’m a judgmental piece of shit.

eru4• 3 years ago

I got 2/10. And one of them only because I recognised Guido van Rossum. I'm honestly impressed that I did so much worse than chance. That must require some special kind of (inverse) skill.

wpietri• 3 years ago

I only got 3 of 10 right, substantially worse than random chance. Sorry, coders! Although I don't feel bad about thinking that the COBOL inventor was a serial killer.

el_toast• 3 years ago

This reminds me of a game me and a buddy started playing called 'homeless or math professor?'. Fun times.

dhosek• 3 years ago

I thought this was going to be about how uncaught null errors kill people.

icpmacdo• 3 years ago

Funny seeing this I've have the identical idea before

spott• 3 years ago

Related: https://www.proforhobo.com

karaokeyoga• 3 years ago

"why not both?"

temeya• 3 years ago

7/10, so a pass. But as others have pointed out, everything in the photographs (from lighting to the angle of the subject) tells nothing about the subject. Unless you've seen pictures before, you wouldn't know, and even then you wouldn't know. People don't matter. Your perception of them DOES matter and that can change from things such as a single photograph.

glandium• 3 years ago

Some of the pictures are clearly mugshots, though, and those are all from serial killers.

avodonosov2• 3 years ago

8/10

I thought one photo was of Larry Wall, but that was a similary looking murderer (and a programmer, but not known to invent any language)

Ericson2314• 3 years ago

Rieser FS Reiser, did he make any PLs?

kasperset• 3 years ago

I scored 8 out of 10! Was fun

daxvena• 3 years ago

I feel like I gamed this somehow. Instead of looking for serial killers, I looked for anyone who didn't look like a programming language inventor and got 10/10.

gorgoiler2• 3 years ago

Rob Pike, Canadian inventor of Golang, an imperative language with a focus on channel based concurrency

…aka a “serial” killer.

Sorry.

isaacfung• 3 years ago

When ProgrammerHumor mixed with DadJokes

aatd86• 3 years ago

A true dad joke would be about cereal killers. That's a bit too dark.

LaurenSerino• 3 years ago

Why not both?

arianvanp• 3 years ago

This is gross

dang• 3 years ago

Programming Language Creator or Serial Killer? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25878602 - Jan 2021 (139 comments)

Can you tell a programmer/language inventor from a killer? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1455383 - June 2010 (12 comments)

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135299 - March 2008 (1 comment)

(I put 2003 on it because of https://web.archive.org/web/20031008105832/http://www.malevo... but I didn't have the patience to wait for it to load. How different can it be though, with that url...)

muzani3• 3 years ago

Interesting how it became more popular recently

debesyla• 3 years ago

Maybe it's because HN is more popular (has more users) over all? Just a guess, I have no idea if there's correlation.

ithkuil• 3 years ago

9 out of 10 You'd spot Hannibal Lecter in seconds at a hack day. Your liver's safe

skrebbel• 3 years ago

I got 6/10 and it told me better not to work in IT recruitment but joke’s on them cause all our interviews are text based

muzani3• 3 years ago

this is why we tell people not to put their photos on resumes

BerislavLopac• 3 years ago

I just chose "serial killer" for everyone. In my experience, when programming language inventors encounter all the comments and requests and criticisms from the users of their languages, there is a very thin line separating them from becoming serial killers...

deelly• 3 years ago

We need additional button, thats appears after wrong choice. "I wish...".

And resulting statistics, of course.

Or is it too dark?

pmontra• 3 years ago

I got 6 out of 10, a poor result according to the site. I picked inventor on the first entry, killer on the second one and kept alternating.

Great site, BTW. Plenty of other games and with an unusual twist they are selling them (the sub sites for the games)

al_be_back• 3 years ago

so that's where Zuckerberg got his idea for hot-or-not

meekaaku• 3 years ago

Just found out i know more serial killers than programming language inventors

benj111• 3 years ago

I got 3 out of 10, and one I recogised.

Does that mean: A. I'm a sociopath because I'm unable to detect the cues

B. An inherently good / naive person that has never needed to differentiate between a programmer and a serial killer?

Til: keep away from people I think look like programming language designers.

FireInsight• 3 years ago

Easy, serial killers always looks more handsome.

einpoklum• 3 years ago

I guessed "programming language inventor" for all of the images I saw, and I would do so again if I had to replay this "game", because I don't think it's reasonable to assume someone is a serial killer, while guessing they've invented a programming language is harmless speculation.

michael_leachim• 3 years ago

10/10 but the difference is obvious, you just have to look into their eyes. PL designers are a bit weird and not of this world.

Serial killers have this spark in their eyes that is really difficult to hide.

thombat• 3 years ago

Both know where they hid the bodies, but for the designers it's a metaphor for the parts of the language they wish had come out better whereas for the killers it's a source of glee that they outsmarted the police.

littlestymaar• 3 years ago

For men, it appears that wearing glasses is a pretty good proxy for not being a serial killer, you'll get 6 out of 8 with that. Unfortunately, the correlation is reversed on the women, which makes it a mediocre 6 out 10.

mcv• 3 years ago

It took shockingly long before I got even a single one right. Fortunately I recognised Guido.

And then there's the trick question where I was right that he looked like a programmer...

borbulon• 3 years ago

I did NOT do well on this quiz. Remind me to run any time someone says they invent programming languages.

spacechild1• 3 years ago

I can't believe they didn't include Bjarne Stroustrup. https://www.linuxjournal.com/files/linuxjournal.com/linuxjou...

jansan2• 3 years ago

Right, learning C++ was a near death experience for me.

Aardwolf• 3 years ago

You know you guessed wrong when you select "Programming language inventor" and the description starts with "The Butcher of ..."

Sindisil• 3 years ago

10/10

Not sure what that say's about me ...

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer? (2003)

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