I am taking a training class for a Majorly Bitchin' commercial tool as I write this. The instructor is explaining to us that the tool supports evaluating mathematical expressions. The subtopic is boolean expressions.

So help me God, the instructor just explained to us that the tools' concept of a boolean variable can have four states: true, false, not found, not set.

Ok, true and false are standard. I will accept not set as object oriented langauages all have the concept of null.

WTF is not found?!!  (she couldn't really explain it)<p>

The sad part is that there are four people in the class who are newbies and are writing down everything she says... Ah well, more fodder for this forum I suppose...

Obviously it's like FILE_NOT_FOUND without the FILE_.

Veinor:

Obviously it's like FILE_NOT_FOUND without the FILE_.

I was thinking that myself, but chose not to go for the obvious.. This woman is *clueless* - ah well, it's a week away from the office!

Gaaah - she just said that we can support any number of states for the boolean object.....

Shoot me now!

...and finally, the parting shot at the end of the module:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 Oh my dear Lord?!!

 

snoofle:

Gaaah - she just said that we can support any number of states for the boolean object.....

Shoot me now!

 

Sweet!  Now you know you can add FILE_NOT_FOUND, to go with NOT_FOUND. 

snoofle:

I am taking a training class for a Majorly Bitchin' commercial tool as I write this.

 

OK, snoofle, you've got to tell us what the MB tool is... the Googles, they do nothing.  All I get is Wikipedia defining MegaByte, Mercedes Benz, and the  Manila Bulletin Online. 

Well, isn't that true for most booleans?

 

boolean a = true, b = false, c;

print a; // true

print b; // false

print c; // not set

print d; // not found

 

*sigh* *bangs head against desk* 

sinistral:

snoofle:

I am taking a training class for a Majorly Bitchin' commercial tool as I write this.

 

OK, snoofle, you've got to tell us what the MB tool is... the Googles, they do nothing.  All I get is Wikipedia defining MegaByte, Mercedes Benz, and the  Manila Bulletin Online. 

Think WebSphere...

snoofle:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 

I dreamed I ran out of the room screaming.

snoofle:

...and finally, the parting shot at the end of the module:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 Oh my dear Lord?!!

 

I thought that "Adobe, the Adobe logo, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, PageMaker, PageMill, Photoshop, PostScript, Streamline, and "If you can dream it, you can do it" are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated." Or so the Google search says.

Ah, so the backronym for MB would be Musiness Bachines if I understand this WebSphere thing right.

snoofle:

Gaaah - she just said that we can support any number of states for the boolean object.....

Shoot me now!

It's quantum!

Nandurius:

Well, isn't that true for most booleans?

 

boolean a = true, b = false, c;

print a; // true

print b; // false

print c; // not set

print d; // not found

 

*sigh* *bangs head against desk* 

But then, d doesn't hold a value of not_found.

If something like that is valid syntax, that would be pretty poor. 

I guess not_found would be equivalent to Javascript's undefined. In JS, a boolean variable can have 4 states indeed: true, false, null (which coerces to false) and undefined, which basically means that the name has never been encountered and generates an error.

Gabelstaplerfahrer:

Ah, so the backronym for MB would be Musiness Bachines if I understand this WebSphere thing right.

ahem, Message Broker

I understand this idea that so many new things are championing of booleans having 3 or 4 values. It makes good sense to have deterministic handling of undefined or undeclared variables and to support some math oriented logic operations. BUT they really need to stop calling them booleans. C booleans win, 0 = false, every other bit pattern = true . You can't have undefined and 'gate not found' in a logic gate. All these new variables are nice for OO programming and plugging in java beans and .net whatever modules and webshit, but they are not booleans.

fennec:

snoofle:

...and finally, the parting shot at the end of the module:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 Oh my dear Lord?!!

 

I thought that "Adobe, the Adobe logo, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, PageMaker, PageMill, Photoshop, PostScript, Streamline, and "If you can dream it, you can do it" are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated." Or so the Google search says.

Well, the Walt Disney Company must be paying them a buttload of money, because I hear that goddamn "if you can dream it..." thing every time I ride the friggin' monorail from smeggin' EPCOT to frackin' Magic Kingdom.

Dang -- I was sure it would be Multi-valued Boolean or something like that.

SpoonMeiser:

But then, d doesn't hold a value of not_found.

If something like that is valid syntax, that would be pretty poor. 

I can see that with auto-declaration in a language. The first time you try to read d, it comes back as "not found" and the system happily declares it. The second time you read it, it has a value of "not set". Usually this sort of thing is abstracted away before the user ever sees it; the system conceals the "not found" and "not set" values from you by handling them as exceptions and assigning a reasonable default.

read(boolean d) { try { get d; } catch (not_found_exception nfe) { create(d); read(d); } catch(not_set_exception nse) { initialise(d); read(d); } }

Granted, recursion isn't the best mechanism, but it works and it was fun to write. It's not the worst way to do it.

But if it's not_found, then it's automatically not_set either. why not just create(d); initialise(d); read(d); in the first catch block?

I think that we need an official name for all of these non-boolean horribly broken and extended booleans.

 

Can I suggest a name for this category as "Enterprisey Booleans"?

RayS:

I think that we need an official name for all of these non-boolean horribly broken and extended booleans.

 

Can I suggest a name for this category as "Enterprisey Booleans"?

How about "Trulean"

 

mrprogguy:

fennec:

snoofle:

...and finally, the parting shot at the end of the module:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 Oh my dear Lord?!!

 

I thought that "Adobe, the Adobe logo, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, PageMaker, PageMill, Photoshop, PostScript, Streamline, and "If you can dream it, you can do it" are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated." Or so the Google search says.

Well, the Walt Disney Company must be paying them a buttload of money, because I hear that goddamn "if you can dream it..." thing every time I ride the friggin' monorail from smeggin' EPCOT to frackin' Magic Kingdom.

 

They shouldn't be paying anything, because it's a quote from Walt Disney himself. 

sycro:

mrprogguy:

fennec:

snoofle:

...and finally, the parting shot at the end of the module:

"If you can dream it, you can do it"

 Oh my dear Lord?!!

 

I thought that "Adobe, the Adobe logo, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, PageMaker, PageMill, Photoshop, PostScript, Streamline, and "If you can dream it, you can do it" are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated." Or so the Google search says.

Well, the Walt Disney Company must be paying them a buttload of money, because I hear that goddamn "if you can dream it..." thing every time I ride the friggin' monorail from smeggin' EPCOT to frackin' Magic Kingdom.

 

They shouldn't be paying anything, because it's a quote from Walt Disney himself. 

An inspection of the USPTO actually shows that Adobe's trademark on the phrase is dead. There are several more trademarks on that phrase; the live one is listed as "IF YOU CAN DREAM IT YOU CAN DO IT AT THE HOME DEPOT".

ah, IP law is the real WTF? ;)

phithe:

But if it's not_found, then it's automatically not_set either. why not just create(d); initialise(d); read(d); in the first catch block?

Because then you have to duplicate the initialise() call in the second one. Duh. Then you end up with this:

read(boolean d) { try { get d; } catch (not_found_exception nfe) { create(d); initialise(d); read(d); } catch(not_set_exception nse) { real_initialise(d); read(d); } }

Now if your boolean is "not found", it doesn't know about the fifth boolean state you added last week for customer #3245.