Another Day Of Not Using My CS Degree

Japanese train stations 🤝 programmers: indexing from zero. While normal humans count from 1, this train platform proudly displays platforms 0 and 1 for the Shinonoi Line, proving that somewhere, a developer was definitely in charge of the numbering system. The non-tech folks probably wonder why they can't just use normal numbers like civilized people, but we know better. Arrays start at 0, platforms start at 0, life starts at 0. It's the natural order of things if you've spent enough time staring at code until your eyes bleed.

The galaxy brain progression of algorithm design: First, there's the caveman approach: brute force. Just try everything and eventually you'll find the answer. Sure, it might take until the heat death of the universe, but hey, it works... technically. Then we graduate to Divide and Conquer (DandC) - splitting problems into smaller chunks. The algorithm equivalent of "I can't eat this whole pizza, so I'll cut it into slices." Next level: Dynamic Programming (DP). Remember stuff so you don't solve the same subproblems repeatedly. Like writing down your ex's birthday so you don't accidentally text them congratulations again after the breakup. But the true enlightenment? Proving your problem is NP-complete and therefore impossible to solve efficiently. "I can't solve this, and neither can anyone else, so I'm actually a genius." The ultimate big brain move in computer science - not solving the problem at all.

Behind every "game developer" label lurks a nightmare of vector math, 3D modeling, shader programming, and eight other specialized disciplines that would make most CS grads curl into a fetal position. It's like claiming you're a "car maker" when in reality you're simultaneously the metallurgist, electrical engineer, upholsterer, and safety tester all while trying not to set yourself on fire. The mask stays on because nobody runs away screaming when you just say "gamedev."

The eternal battle between while-do and do-while loops played out through Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote! On the left, Road Runner safely checks the condition (!edge) before running, saving himself from the cliff. Meanwhile, poor Coyote executes run() first and only checks (!edge) after he's already airborne. And that's why you always validate before executing, folks! The difference between falling and living another day is literally one line of code.

The eternal tragedy of dating a non-programmer. She says "1st table" but he's sitting at "Table 00" because in his world, counting starts at zero. Meanwhile, she's at "Table 01" wondering why she matched with this pedantic nerd in the first place. This is why programmers stay single – we're too busy arguing about whether arrays start at 0 or 1 to realize we're missing the date entirely.

This is the programming equivalent of asking for McDonald's and your mom saying "we have food at home" — except the food at home is MATLAB. If you've ever had the misfortune of using MATLAB, you know it's that weird cousin of programming languages that engineers and academics love but actual software developers avoid like a production bug on Friday afternoon. It's powerful for math and matrices (hence the name), but coding in it feels like trying to build a website using only a scientific calculator. The $2000+ license fee is just the cherry on top of this engineering department nightmare.