FlexBandit » Inflatable Programmer http://flexbandit.com Yet another Flex enthusiast? You Betcha! Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:34:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The Inflatable Programmer is Officially Coined http://flexbandit.com/archives/49 http://flexbandit.com/archives/49#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:59:18 +0000 donkeybandit http://flexbandit.com/?p=49 What started out as an amusing observation seems to have gathered the tiniest bit of momentum, to which this post may add. I rather flipantly recounted the story of the inflatable programmer in a previous post and thought nothing more of it. Well, after monitoring my web traffic today I discovered that it has been googled randomly by someone in Germany.

I have no idea why anyone would search for the phrase, but incidentally this site does come up as the number one hit for “Inflatable Programmer” in Google (as of today). This makes me happy for a number of reasons and has left me curious about the future of its existence. One of these days I may actually put an entry into Wikipedia, but I am enjoying being number one for now :-)

]]> http://flexbandit.com/archives/49/feed 0 The Inflatable Programmer http://flexbandit.com/archives/43 http://flexbandit.com/archives/43#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:41:57 +0000 donkeybandit http://flexbandit.com/?p=43 As programmers we’ve all been there. You’re working on a particularly tricky bug and for some reason you just can’t figure out what’s going wrong, so you call over one of your colleagues in the grim hope that they may be able to help you solve your problem. So the first thing you do is explain the issue to your colleague, perhaps giving some background if necessary, then just as you get to the point of explaining the bug …. “BAM!” you figure it out. You turn to your colleague, thank them for their help and they continue on with their day.

Once, in response to a bug fixing session like this, the said colleague responded with a loud and flamboyant “THE INFLATABLE PROGRAMMER STRIKES AGAIN!”. Due to the extreme gusto in which he responded I presumed that he was quoting a Dilbert cartoon or some such thing, so promptly adopted the phrase in the years that followed.

So here I am some 6 or 7 years later making coy reference to the inflatable programmer like it is a common phrase in general use by everyone (not just programmers). After a response to one of my Zentrack forum entries in which I very nearly entered the classic phrase, I decided to research exactly where it came from. As it happens, my colleague (and good friend) made it up on the spot. Not only did he make it up, but today when I asked him about it, he had no recollection of ever saying it in the first place!

Well, perhaps it is finally time to get the phrase well and truly “coined”?

Inflatable Programmer – A person who sits ineffectually listening to a programmer while they inadvertantly solve their own issues.

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