Happy Programmer’s Day

Today (September 13, 2015) is Programmer’s Day — a recognition day that started in Russia, but has been adopted by many countries. While it is great that there is a day recognizing the contribution of programmers to society, the really interesting part is why it is on September 13 (except on leap years).

The leap year part should be a clue. Today is Julian day 256. We’ll guess that anyone reading Hackaday doesn’t need to be told the rest of the story. While it might not be as good of an in-joke as May the 4th (be with you), it is satisfying to know that it isn’t just a random date from the calendar. Now if we could only get the day off as paid vacation…

While it is from last year, we couldn’t help but watch [Kristina Lopez’s] video again, and you should too (see below). If you are a hardware person and you’d like to be a part of this special day, may we suggest diodes? In any event, happy Programmer’s Day from all of us at Hackaday.

Cartoon courtesy of the amazingly funny [XKCD].

40 thoughts on “Happy Programmer’s Day

    1. I don’t remember where I stole it but I’ve often said: All software has bugs. All software can be simplified. Therefore, all software can be reduced to one line of code that doesn’t work.

  1. Heh…this reminds me of program development on the PDP-11 platform from DEC, using RSX11 OS. Compiling wasn’t so slow, but the link-edit that turned object files into executables took forever and consumed a fantastic amount of resources. For a number of years, the number one most requested improvement to TKB (the link-editor was called the Task Builder, or TKB) was “same day service”.

      1. But, more importantly 2 ^ 8 power or 1 byte, or 400 Octal, or 100000000 Binary, or 100x Hex, which is of course what others have said. But I’m pretty sure it’s just the one bytes.

      2. Yes, I get that, but in 8-bit the upper value is 255, so the largest Julian day that you would get in an 8-bit register would be 255, so I still say it should be one day earlier. Sure, if you were storing the days in an array with an 8-bit index make array[0] = 1, array[1] = 2, etc, but if you want to stick to the 8-bit world (e.g., your array is an array of uint8_t), array[255] would have to be set to to 0 encode 256, since you would mean 0x(1)00. Most programmers would store the the first Julian day as 0, and then take care of it in the code that displays the date, since that would be better than a roll-over to zero for the 256th date or (horrors) using a 16bit value (I get that it’s moot for days of the year, since you need at least 9 bits to encode 356 days).

        I suppose what is even dumber is me starting this subthread ;)

  2. Happy Programmers Day nerds!

    I wrote no code today (but I did looke at the usage stats on two pieces of software I maintain). To celebrate the day, I played guitar for a couple of hours this morning then I tinkered with a motorbike I’m restoring. Had a great day!

      1. I’m addicted to race replica’s of the 80’s era. Yesterday I was working on my 1986 GSX-R750R Limited Edition. This was a short production run bike that allowed Suzuki to run a high performance bike of that era as a production class race bike.

        I know very little history of this bike. It looks like it’s always lived indoors and it’s all factory equipped with no aftermarket modifications but it’s definitely suffered some trauma in it’s time. The nearly impossible to find dry-clutch was completely obliterated and some of the plastics are just destroyed however the frame, rest of the engine, wheels, etc… are in great shape. Otherwise it looks to me like it just sat for a good 10 years or so. I’ve gone through pretty much every nut/bolt/bearing on the bike repairing, rebuilding and replacing as I go. After yesterday’s work, it’s finally, pretty much just cosmetics left to do.

        Yesterday I had the electrics behind the engine and under the seat exposed. I replaced the ignition box (just in case) and went through all of the connections with contact cleaner. I also had to replace the battery box, which was the bulk of the work yesterday because someone had let the battery boil over and then left it in place for 5 – 7 years before I got my hands on the bike. Now that everything is pretty much back to OEM specs, I hope to fire it up this week and take it for a spin around the block. I’ve had it running (somewhat roughly) when I first took possession of the bike but I haven’t ridden it yet.

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