The Internet Meme Timeline

CNet pointed out a great use of timeline creation site "Dipity" that has resulted a timeline of internet fads and memes. While there are some subtle inaccuracies and a few notable omissions, it seems to have touched on most of the big stuff. Everything from GOTO being considered harmful to "the website is down," it's a great trip down memory lane if you don't mind a few speedbumps like the goatse guy.

Better edit the summary

if you don't mind a few speedbumps like the goatse guy.

Goatse is a sinkhole, not a speedbump.

Re:Better edit the summary

no, there are bumps. you just have to look harder.

Re:Better edit the summary

Mr. Goatse has been known to apply his preparation-H [preparationh.com] using a pastry bag [google.com].

Re:Better edit the summary

You want me to look HARDER at goatse?

It does have something of a mandala-like quality to it.

Do you know if you move your head from side to side while staring at goatse, it appears to follow you as you move, like that picture of Jesus you can buy at the flea market?

Goto is Evil

Goto is evil and I am not going to cave in on that.

Re:Goto is Evil

GOTO being evil wasn't just a meme. When I took Intro to Computer Science in college in 1984, the course was in FORTRAN. I was informed that GOTO's led to unstructured code and that any project we handed in with a GOTO in it would receive a score of zero, as would any test on which we used one to solve a problem.

assembly

So if you're coding in assembly and have to branch, what do you do?

And for that matter, when you make a method/function call, doesn't the compiler create a JMP (goto) instruction?

And does that mean that assembly programmers are evil?

Re:assembly

And does that mean that assembly programmers are evil?

Yes

Re:assembly

Anybody who has to ask the questions which were posed obviously is incapable of writing good code and using GOTO. Therefor the rule applies until such time as a programmer no longer has to ask. Once a programmer no longer has to ask, he may use GOTO however much he wants. However, the need for GOTO is less required at this stage than earlier in the process, and the programmer realizes there is no GOTO, just DO.

It's a zen thing.

Re:assembly

JMP is a GOTO and JSR (Jump to SubRoutine) is a GOSUB, as anyone who cut their teeth on a 6502 will tell you.

Re:Goto is Evil

Meh. Along the same lines as what I said in the COBOL thread yesterday, your compiled code probably contains a lot of whatever JMP gets to be at the machine code level, and that's nothing but a goto spelled differently.

Anything can be used incorrectly and/or incomprehesibly, even comments. I'd rather just get my programs to work and be maintainable than articially limit my toolbox.

Re:Goto is Evil

Don't forget that things like break and continue are also gotos with funny sounding names.

Even Dijkstra, the author of Go To Statements Considered Harmful, wrote "Please don't fall into the trap of thinking I am terribly dogmatic about the go to statement. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline."

Re:Goto is Evil

I had a professor who allowed gotos as long as they were used for getting out of deeply nested loops, and were jumping to a label within the same function, no more than about 15 or 20 lines of text away. He asserted (and I agree) that this is more readable than flag values and cascading

if (flag) break;

I've seen a goto used in place of more traditional looping constructs deep within the inner loop of a very performance intense application. This thing already had resorted to inline assembly in other areas, so ease of code reading most definitely being sacrificed for bleeding edge performance.

This isn't the type of thing that anyone does very often, and most people probably never need to.

Re:Goto is Evil

of what you're reading.

I bet it was cool

8/8/08: Added 'Slashdotted' meme to timeline.

Re:I bet it was cool

8/6/08: Added 'Digged' meme to timeline.
8/7/08: Added 'Farked' meme to timeline.
8/8/08: Added 'Slashdotted' meme to timeline.
8/9/08: Added 'DNS Poisoned' meme to timeline. Buy V1@GrA Now!

Re:I bet it was cool

I never understood the whole "this was on Digg/Fark/Reddit/BoingBoing/Inquirer/Register/Kuro5shin yesterday" thing.

Was it? Great. When choosing between seeing it two days later, or having to go to one of those other sites that are polluted with even more nonsense than exists on Slashdot, I've chosen the former. The real question is, if people have already see this stuff on other sites, why don't they go there and stop coming here?

firehose

If you want to improve the site submit your own properly edited stories and use your influence over the firehose to promote stories of interest.

Re:I bet it was cool

8/8/08: Added 'Slashdotted' meme to timeline.
8/9/08: Added 'DNS Poisoned' meme to timeline. Buy V1@GrA Now!

There was another one on the 8/8 which you missed:

8/8/08: Added 'Duped' meme to timeline.

8/9/08: Added 'Duped' meme to timeline

Obvious Joke

The website is down.

Speedbumps?

Hell, things like goatse is why I would want such a tool in the first place.

I have warm, fond memories of him, tubgirl, the lemonparty, twogirlsonecup. They comfort me at night, and keep me warm inside my heda, where they frolic and romp through green and brown fields. Ah, the heady springtime of the internet, where such creatures roam easy and free. Now we enter the dark says of summer, where the storms of incomprehensible images and video come upon us, cheapening these rare jewels.

Is it me

or is it missing 2girls1cup?

Where?

Where are the GRITS?

The original Meme

Me too!

Re:Slashdotted...

It probably doesn't run linux