The Third Bit

xkcd is one of my favorite things on the web, but when I read this one I thought he got it all wrong, on both branches. (I’ve worked in both branches, and since joining the commercial side I’ve hired software developers who worked for university research labs.) I thought the academic branch was unrealistic. I thought the business branch was more realistic … for academia! Except I suppose that Outlook is much less common in academia than in business.

My personal favorite xkcd is http://xkcd.com/163/

By Steve Eddins on Nov 18, 2009

I’m gonna print that one out and give it to the interviewers who ask me why I didn’t finish my BSc…

By Tor-Ivar Valåmo on Nov 18, 2009

Yes, I agree, it’s all wrong:

* Academia: “we have to make it more sophisticate, to be able to publish it in a fancy journal”

* Business: “OK, but we can’t sell 200 lines of code to our customer for the price we budgeted. Go back and add something”.

:/

By gael varoquaux on Nov 18, 2009

If you looked at the tooltip text of this XKCD comic, take a look at the following article:

Origin of Quake3′s Fast InvSqrt()

The key word is 0x5f3759df.

By Uldis Bojars on Nov 18, 2009

Greg: So how’s that whole “academia vs business” job choice dilemma thingy coming along?

By Steve Easterbrook on Nov 19, 2009

@Steve: What “dilemma”?

By Greg Wilson on Nov 19, 2009