The Truth About Bender's Brain
May 22, 2009 9:56 AM Subscribe
The Truth About Bender's Brain - part of IEEE Spectrum's 25 Microchips That Shook the World (one page) (previously)
Also worth mentioning: A beer-brewing life sized Bender which can play back some of Bender's wittiest sayings with the help of a 6502 processor.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:14 AM on May 22, 2009 [6 favorites]
posted by dunkadunc at 10:14 AM on May 22, 2009 [6 favorites]
I'm more of a 6510 fan.
posted by Artw at 10:16 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 10:16 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
It's never ceased to amaze me that such a bunch of geeks ended up with a program on FOX which lasted five seasons. When I go back and watch the episodes over, I never fail to find some other minor visual math of geekery joke. It got to the point that I almost had to pause the program to explain why I'm laughing at some random scene to my fiance.
posted by jamuraa at 10:27 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by jamuraa at 10:27 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
A lot of the geekery on Futurama really didn't impress me, but then maybe I'm just a lot more of a geek than I think I am.
What did really blow me away was on Robot Chicken where a guy's getting into a Camaro with a girl and she says "Bitchin' car!". Dead Milkmen, anyone? Way less popular than the 6502.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:33 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
What did really blow me away was on Robot Chicken where a guy's getting into a Camaro with a girl and she says "Bitchin' car!". Dead Milkmen, anyone? Way less popular than the 6502.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:33 AM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
The 6502 really was a great chip and coupled with the AIM-65 you could quickly develop 6502 based devices.
posted by caddis at 10:36 AM on May 22, 2009
posted by caddis at 10:36 AM on May 22, 2009
dunkadunc: There was a Dead Milkmen reference in one of the recent Futurama movies. It was just 'Rocketship' played whenever the ship would launch, but it was enough be the most memorable thing about the movie for me.
posted by bunnytricks at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2009
posted by bunnytricks at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2009
Nifty article. Thanks for the link.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2009
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 10:44 AM on May 22, 2009
Also: Futurama cast singing Black Flag's "TV Party".
My mind just melted.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:51 AM on May 22, 2009 [5 favorites]
My mind just melted.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:51 AM on May 22, 2009 [5 favorites]
A lot of the geekery on Futurama really didn't impress me
Cineplex Aleph-Zero?
I could probably find 10 Dead Milkmen fans for every person who gets that joke.
posted by blenderfish at 10:53 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
Cineplex Aleph-Zero?
I could probably find 10 Dead Milkmen fans for every person who gets that joke.
posted by blenderfish at 10:53 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
It is even more impressive when you consider that virtually no comments appeared in the program—just page after page of assembly language.
On behalf of software engineers everywhere, I would like to thank you for both getting into entertainment and out of engineering.
posted by butterstick at 10:57 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
On behalf of software engineers everywhere, I would like to thank you for both getting into entertainment and out of engineering.
posted by butterstick at 10:57 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
how funny...i compiled a list of everything inside of bender recently (still gotta type it up), and had to google up what the 6502 was...very funny stuff. my favorite though, is when he barfs nuts and bolts. best physics joke on the show: when al gore tries to drive his taxi over the broken bridge...
posted by sexyrobot at 11:00 AM on May 22, 2009
posted by sexyrobot at 11:00 AM on May 22, 2009
I'm a bit late, but dunkadunc's also worth mentioning was the content in the (previous) link.
There are some shows that have such a depth of cultural in-jokes that I wish the DVDs came with footnote-type subtitles. Futurama is one of those shows.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:09 AM on May 22, 2009
There are some shows that have such a depth of cultural in-jokes that I wish the DVDs came with footnote-type subtitles. Futurama is one of those shows.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:09 AM on May 22, 2009
butterstick: "It is even more impressive when you consider that virtually no comments appeared in the program—just page after page of assembly language.
On behalf of software engineers everywhere, I would like to thank you for both getting into entertainment and out of engineering."
As far as I've seen, comments are a mythical beast, rarely seen in the real world. I've seen far more code with little or no commenting than I've seen code properly commented. My last job involved maintaining a tool written in ~30K lines of C++ without a single comment.
posted by octothorpe at 11:14 AM on May 22, 2009
On behalf of software engineers everywhere, I would like to thank you for both getting into entertainment and out of engineering."
As far as I've seen, comments are a mythical beast, rarely seen in the real world. I've seen far more code with little or no commenting than I've seen code properly commented. My last job involved maintaining a tool written in ~30K lines of C++ without a single comment.
posted by octothorpe at 11:14 AM on May 22, 2009
Dead Milkmen, anyone? Way less popular than the 6502.
Good!
posted by asusu at 11:40 AM on May 22, 2009
Good!
posted by asusu at 11:40 AM on May 22, 2009
One key difference between an amateur programmer and a professional programmer is that a an amateur programmer feels guilty about not commenting his code.
[In all seriousness, comments are good, but only when used to explain 'why' something is the way it is (i.e. "This call is required because Windows 95 will fail if we don't do it,") and not 'what' it's doing (i.e., "This code sorts through the array and finds the elements with non-zero size")] The 'what' comments, besides being merely redundant, can sometimes lie to you and hide bugs.
posted by blenderfish at 11:48 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
[In all seriousness, comments are good, but only when used to explain 'why' something is the way it is (i.e. "This call is required because Windows 95 will fail if we don't do it,") and not 'what' it's doing (i.e., "This code sorts through the array and finds the elements with non-zero size")] The 'what' comments, besides being merely redundant, can sometimes lie to you and hide bugs.
posted by blenderfish at 11:48 AM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
Also: Futurama cast singing Black Flag's "TV Party".
My mind just melted.
That was after they played the actual song earlier in the episode ("Bender Should Not Be On Television", I believe it was the next-to-last episode of the series). Can you imagine licensing a Black Flag song? They're probably the first to try since the producers of Repo Man.
Greg Ginn: "Uh, yeah, uh, I guess you can use it... if you buy me an ounce of pot?" (hangs up) Fuck yeah! Annihilate this week!"
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:01 PM on May 22, 2009 [5 favorites]
My mind just melted.
That was after they played the actual song earlier in the episode ("Bender Should Not Be On Television", I believe it was the next-to-last episode of the series). Can you imagine licensing a Black Flag song? They're probably the first to try since the producers of Repo Man.
Greg Ginn: "Uh, yeah, uh, I guess you can use it... if you buy me an ounce of pot?" (hangs up) Fuck yeah! Annihilate this week!"
posted by DecemberBoy at 12:01 PM on May 22, 2009 [5 favorites]
When the 555 hit the market in 1971, it was a sensation. In 1975 Signetics was absorbed by Philips Semiconductors, now NXP, which says that many billions have been sold. Engineers still use the 555 to create useful electronic modulesas well as less useful things like “Knight Rider”–style lights for car grilles.
Heh.
posted by delmoi at 12:35 PM on May 22, 2009
Heh.
posted by delmoi at 12:35 PM on May 22, 2009
There are some shows that have such a depth of cultural in-jokes that I wish the DVDs came with footnote-type subtitles. Futurama is one of those shows.
I couldn't tell you how many times I'm watching a movie or TV show on the computer, and I pause it to consult Google or Wikipedia regarding something I've just seen.
posted by mikelieman at 12:56 PM on May 22, 2009
I couldn't tell you how many times I'm watching a movie or TV show on the computer, and I pause it to consult Google or Wikipedia regarding something I've just seen.
posted by mikelieman at 12:56 PM on May 22, 2009
In all seriousness, comments are good, but only when used to explain 'why' something is the way it is (i.e. "This call is required because Windows 95 will fail if we don't do it,") and not 'what' it's doing (i.e., "This code sorts through the array and finds the elements with non-zero size")] The 'what' comments, besides being merely redundant, can sometimes lie to you and hide bugs.
Yeah, I agree. If code is written well, or at least just written in a normal straight-forward way, comments are rarely more helpful than just reading the actual code itself. If code actually needs a lot of comments in order to understand it, that's usually a bad sign. Also, good variable and function naming helps a lot, because if you write a line of code that says "fictionBooks = mediaList.FindBooksByGenre("fiction")," there's not much of a reason to write a comment pointing out that "This line returns all of the fiction books from the media list."
The last time I had to work with a big legacy code project that had a ton of comments, I ended up setting up my editor to show the comments in a color that made them nearly invisible unless I highlighted them. I had to read the code to figure out what was going on in enough detail to do what I needed to do, and the comments were usually either obvious, cryptic, or completely wrong.
posted by burnmp3s at 1:39 PM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I agree. If code is written well, or at least just written in a normal straight-forward way, comments are rarely more helpful than just reading the actual code itself. If code actually needs a lot of comments in order to understand it, that's usually a bad sign. Also, good variable and function naming helps a lot, because if you write a line of code that says "fictionBooks = mediaList.FindBooksByGenre("fiction")," there's not much of a reason to write a comment pointing out that "This line returns all of the fiction books from the media list."
The last time I had to work with a big legacy code project that had a ton of comments, I ended up setting up my editor to show the comments in a color that made them nearly invisible unless I highlighted them. I had to read the code to figure out what was going on in enough detail to do what I needed to do, and the comments were usually either obvious, cryptic, or completely wrong.
posted by burnmp3s at 1:39 PM on May 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
A Series of Emails From Cyberdyne’s New Tech Guy
posted by homunculus at 3:11 PM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
posted by homunculus at 3:11 PM on May 22, 2009 [3 favorites]
6800-series, babies. Well-designed chips. Nice instruction set.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:58 PM on May 22, 2009
posted by five fresh fish at 10:58 PM on May 22, 2009
Fascinating article. I was expecting it to be a countdown of the most famous processors, which it decidedly was not. Serial controllers and synchronization mechanisms may not be sexy, but your PC would be a very smart paperweight without them. I love seeing the genius behind the stuff we take for granted.
posted by CaseyB at 4:23 PM on May 23, 2009
posted by CaseyB at 4:23 PM on May 23, 2009
As far as I've seen, comments are a mythical beast, rarely seen in the real world. I've seen far more code with little or no commenting than I've seen code properly commented. My last job involved maintaining a tool written in ~30K lines of C++ without a single comment.
I take issue with thinking this was an "impressive" feat. If the code was so straightforward that it could be written in assembler without documentation and still be maintainable, that would in fact be impressive, but still terrifying to any sensible project manager.
posted by butterstick at 9:12 AM on June 1, 2009
I take issue with thinking this was an "impressive" feat. If the code was so straightforward that it could be written in assembler without documentation and still be maintainable, that would in fact be impressive, but still terrifying to any sensible project manager.
posted by butterstick at 9:12 AM on June 1, 2009
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