Jez Higgins

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The Forest Road Reader, No 2.34 : Well, I guess you had to be there

A programmer and a systems analyst are going hunting in the woods together. After several hours of rugged hiking, they arrive at the cabin where they’re staying.

The systems analyst say to the programmer "You stay here while I go and find a bear", and then heads off into the trees.

The programmer sits down on a tree stump to wait. Some time later the programmer hears a commotion. Looking up he sees a bear approaching at high speed, chased by the systems analyst.

"Open the door!" yells the systems analyst, "Open the door!".

The programmer opens the cabin door, the systems analyst chases the bear inside, then slams the door shut.

"Right," says the systems analyst, "you kill it and skin it, and I’ll go and find another bear."

I read this joke in "Jack Schofield’s Computer Joke Book" column in, I think, Personal Computer World in 1984-85 while I was still at school. At the time it made absolutely no sense to me at all, until I actually met a real-life systems analyst at a open evening at the local college.

During our conversation he made programming sound like the most tedious and boring job in the world. By his telling, systems analysts did all the thinking and problem solving, then the programmers typed out the answer.

To kids like us, who sat up all night programming out Spectrums (or BBC Micros if you were a posh kid), that made no sense. That bloke, who ever he was, is partially responsible for me doing electronics engineering at college and university instead.

Still, worked out ok in the end.




Jez Higgins

Freelance software grandad
software created
extended or repaired

Follow me on Mastodon
Applications, Libraries, Code
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Older posts are available in the archive or through tags.

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