JedFonner.com

Talking with my friend Brian, I was reminded of a story from my first year in computer science class at the University of Pennsylvania. From that story, we realized we’d known of the best name for a programming blog ever, we just hadn’t realized it.

Back in our CS 100 days, we had many late nights spent in the lab. And usually, when we were in the lab, we spent a lot of time banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out tricky problems. Of course by “tricky” I mean relatively obvious things that should have been taught to us if our professor actually ever taught us anything. And this was before professors were irrelevant because you could just go online and Google your question and find the answer.

But there was one bastion of hope and help - the TAs. We could IM the TAs while in the lab and ask them questions. One night, while struggling with a problem which I have long since forgotten, Brian and I threw ourselves at the mercy of the TA on duty. We posed our question to him, and this was his first response:

I swear Brian and I stared at that one line for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually we humbled ourselves and asked him what the hell he was talking about. He calmly explained that OOP is “object oriented programming” and “grok” means to understand deeply (don’t believe me? Look it up).

From there the conversation got easier. But now I can’t help thinking that one line would be the best name for a programming blog ever.

So once I have enough time on my hands, I fully intend to start the How much OOP do you grok? website. It will be very web2.0ish, or maybe web3.0ish depending on how long it takes me to set it up. And in case you were thinking of snagging it away from me, you’re too late, I’ve already registered www.howmuchoopdoyougrok.com.