April Fool

When I was growing up, I was usually happier when April 1 did not fall on a school day. Most people, especially children, are lacking in a sense of elegance and finesse. Thety equate "practical jokes" with whoopee cushions and dribble glasses, where success is measured on a scale from embarrassment to petty cruelty.

In past years, however, I have developed quite an appreciation for the elegance of high tech April Fools Day specials, such as Google's MentalPlex™ ("Search smarter and faster" - 2000) or their most excellent "patented PigeonRank™ system" (2002).

Commentator, from Cenqua, is almost believable.

The Commentator uses revolutionary real-time language processing to actually grok your code and add the necessary comments on the fly. No more doco to slow you down. Just install The Commentator and watch as your coding elegance is eloquently decorated with insightful, nuanced commentary ...as you type.

Consider how much imagination, thought, and sheer effort, goes into the more elaborate April 1 inventions (confections?), such as this technical tutorial (with code) for optimizing the idle loop in Apple's Darwin OS.

Just think, if we could harness some of that creative energy for something else we'd... wait. We can and do, during the other 364 days of the year.

April Fool ( in category Random Thoughts ) - posted at Fri, 01 Apr, 21:43 Pacific | «e»