"That would be a redundant waste of time."

While walking down the hallway I heard this sentence uttered and was completely confused.

Say the sentence out loud. Now think about the implications of this statement and wonder whether or not the speaker intended this sentence to be self referential. Kind of a mind game isn’t it? Did the speaker intend this subtle nuance? Were they ignorant to the fact that the statement was as convoluted as it sounds?

I was fortunate enough to hear the speaker and I fully believe that they did not intend to create this “pun.” However, if I was not there I would have no idea what the connotation or semantics of the statement were.

Of course since I don’t want to waste anyone’s time by reading this or to take up unnecessary disk space I have to tie this into some aspect of software engineering. So, this is just a friendly reminder to document your code. Also if you think you’re doing something that’s “elegant” be sure you explain what you’re doing, otherwise when you go back to it or if someone else needs to make some changes you won’t know what’s going on.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 17, 2004
  Reading this weblog entry was a great, yet divinely refreshing redundant, waste of my time. See ya tomorrow, dizzle. ;)
• Anonymous
  March 18, 2004
  Hey folks, I just came across another term that's pretty funny. This one was also used by someone who thought what they were saying was making sense:
  
  "running instances" - the person was referring to a process
• Anonymous
  April 06, 2004
  My favourite "redundant" is the "redundant schitzo" :-)