The child should have bought 3 bottles of milk.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I always think this joke is more of a linguistics/grammar joke than programming. The kid resolves the ambiguity in the ellipsis incorrectly, but why is this a programmer joke?
Yes the joke is definitely on human language and not on programming but I think programmer can be relate here. At least I feel this joke is made in every computer science ground class ever.
I suppose it demonstrates the ambiguity of human language and need to formalize things for computers
I heard this joke in Spanish, but the meaning is a bit different. Eggs is a colloquial/slang term for testicles (like balls in English), so "if you have eggs" means "if you dare".
I love having a joke that works in two languages but for different reasons.
The joke lies in interpreting human languages as if it was a computer algorithm. Remove any computer language context, and it is hard to even find a joke or logic in this. Any human would not do this interpretation since we can understand context, this would only be seen as a very strange attempt at a joke. However, computers don't understand context, so adding that component and the joke makes sense. So, even if it really is a grammar joke, it needs the programming context to work as a joke.
For a serious reoly, I think the expression "If they have eggs, buy two" is redundant. If they didn't have eggs, the kid just can't and won't buy any eggs.
I think the proper command would be, "Please buy 1 bottle of milk and two eggs." That way, the kid won't be confused and it's still a proper valid command.
Unfortunately though, the sentence is ambiguous even to non-programmers. It is unknown whether the if condition applies to
- buying two eggs (buy two eggs)
- buying two bottles of milk (buy two bottles instead)
- or buying a bottle of milk (buy another bottle)
Simply because they didn't specify which to buy.
For a non-serious reply,
cart.add(supermarket.takeProduct(ProductType.milk, 1));
if (supermarket.getProduct(type: ProductType.eggs).length > 0) {
cart.add(supermarket.takeProduct(Product type.milk, 2));
}
cart.checkout();
The kid should have bought a total of 3 bottles.
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