The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021)

Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by trebbble on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @12:03PM (#32333510)

"Now we'll init a happy little project..."

    ERROR: CANNOT READ INPUT

"Well... maybe we have a happy little full disk? Or a happy little broken pipe somewhere?"

    20 minutes later

"Ah, it was a mis-match issue between versions 3.4 and 3.5 and our command line tools—the error message was misleading. What a naughty little error message! But now we're back on 3.4 and our tools are happy again. We'll just init this happy little project..."

    UNKNOWN SYMBOL 'DYNLIB_AUTOLOADER' ON LINE 836 OF ../../../BOBOLIB/INTERFACES/MAGIC_REPTILIZER.BRN

"Um. Now isn't that silly, folks! We haven't even written any code, how can we have errors in it? Let me see if... no, that's not a path to anything from the current directory, so that must be from a process running with a different working directory. Let me just do a 'find'... no, no such file anywhere on my filesystem. One moment, we'll be back to painting trees in no time, I'm sure..."

    An hour and forty-five minutes later

"Phew. There. This language's package manager had downloaded a binary for a different processor architecture, and then used it to try to build another package, and that failed. We didn't have the file mentioned in the error because that was using symbols from someone else's machine, having no relation to any files on this one. Luckily these tools let us build a package from source—except that was also broken, for another reason entirely. However! I found a link to a zip deep in a PHPBB forum that contains the fixed package, built for our architecture. The link was broken, but I was able to use the file name to find the zip on Mega. Hopefully my computer didn't catch a virus from it. Now, back to initing our HAPPY. LITTLE. PROJECT."

    ERROR: LIBRARY 'ROOPTYROO' REQUIRES VERSION 3.5, FOUND VERSION 3.4

Flips desk, swears, kicks everything

----

Thus ends the short career of Programmer Bob Ross.

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by foldedcornice on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @12:33PM (#32333877)

This reminds me of how Harvard's CS50 course by Professor David Malan, which is an introduction to programming and computer science. In one of the first lectures, Prof. Malan shows what happens when there is an error [0] when trying to run code in C.

He jokes that he thinks there are "more errors than code [he] wrote," and goes through them with a positive attitude. Throughout the course, he is also aware and openly talks & jokes about the limitations of C as a programming language, then discusses workarounds. Any feelings of frustrations due to errors are then blunted quite a bit, because of prior exposure in the lectures.

It's remarkable how the tone is quite similar. Perhaps Prof. Malan is the rough equivalent of Bob Ross for programming today.

[0] https://youtu.be/URrzmoIyqLw?t=2074

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by striking on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @12:06PM (#32333549)

Bob Ross was a drill instructor before he became the artist we all know and love. I think you'd have to have someone cut from similar cloth (maybe even tougher) for the programming version.

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by Jaruzel on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @01:50PM (#32334838)

There were also no such thing as 'happy little accidents'. Each show was meticulously scripted, and the painting you see him paint is the 3rd iteration, with a previous version off camera as a reference.

Even knowing this, he still brings the joy to me, every time I watch him.

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by Beltalowda on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @04:49PM (#32336512)

For a short half-hour show you kind of need to do that if you want to get good results; not a lot of time to take a step back and look at things, and you also want to actually have a finished painting after 30 minutes (and not 24 or 35).

The general message still holds I think: "you're painting for your own enjoyment, there is no 'good' or 'bad' and the only thing that matters is that you're having fun".

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by StrictDabbler on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @02:07PM (#32335035)

That explains why his predecessor, William Alexander, made such a terrible painting in the video embedded in this article.

Other Bill Alexander paintings you can find online are competent. Uninspired but competent. The one in the "The Magic of Oil Painting III" is wretched.

Clearly the three drafts are an important aspect of the final Bob Ross process.

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by spywaregorilla on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @12:38PM (#32333945)

A paired programmer whose partner ignores all keyboard shortcuts

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Re:The Ugly War over Bob Ross’ Ghost (2021) by nosmokewhereiam on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @01:32PM (#32334626)

First sergeant*

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