Tag Archives: they might be giants

Great Moments in Nerdery: Meet the Elements

There probably aren’t very many things nerdier than singing about science, specifically the periodic table. One need only check out the About Us section of The Nerdery to witness our penchant for periodic tables first hand. Here in this cute and incredibly catchy video They Might Be Giants put the periodic table to music. I warn you, it is They Might Be Giants and you’ll be singing snippets of this song for the rest of the day.

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Songs in the key of nerd*

Editor’s Note: Hey, we’ve got a new name on Inside the Nerdery. This is Ryan Kucera’s first post. He’ll be popping in from time to time with some nerdery for you to enjoy.

Control structures and code syntax becomes second language to us programmers, almost literally. It’s very common to find complex commentary communicated with terse code snippets – for example, searching Twitter for common PHP keywords pulls up some real gems.

Some time ago, my brother (a C++ nerd) and I had the following IM conversation, in which we attempted to best each other with witty source-code versions of song lyrics. Yeah, yeah, most of these won’t compile; most are considered “pseudo-code.” Take a look, and see if you can recognize these tunes!

  1. Joel says:
    if( tan(bull) ) ! const & noop();
  2. Joel says:
    do {
        triangle(can);
    } while (triangleman);
  3. Ryan says:
    my $blue; 2*($d); for (1..2) { die(); }
  4. Ryan says:
    while ($me->getUp()) {
        knock($me,”down”);
    }
  5. Joel says:
    while (beer.bottles.quantity > 0)
    {
        take_down(bottle = beer.get_bottle(1)):
        pass_arround(bottle);
    }
  6. Joel says:
    boat.row();
    boat.row();
    boat.row();
    go(upstream, gently);
  7. Joel says:
    char * word;
    if (word[4] = ‘d’ && word[3] == ‘l’ && word[2] = r)
    {
        // it’s the end of the “world”
        // and we know it.
    }

Editor’s Note: *Trip Shakespeare, my cubemate, is demanding proper credit for his rather witty headline. I got his proper credit right here.

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Filed under Nerdery Culture