The Computer Scientist and the Burning Room

Item:

 

“A computer scientist wakes up in the middle of the night and he notices the building is on fire.  There is a bucket next to the faucet, and he fills up the bucket and pours it on the fire and the fire goes out.  A few months later he wakes up and same thing, the room is on fire.  He finds the bucket next to the fire and the bucket is full of water.  So what does he do? He empties the bucket on the ground to reduce to the base case, fills the bucket up from the faucet, and dumps it on the fire”

 

 

  • Oral Folklore: Joke
  • English
  • USA
  • Collector: Jonah Deykin

 

Informant Data:

 

Trevor Davis is a Computer Science major in the Dartmouth class of 2018.  He is from Raleigh, North Carolina.

 

Contextual Data:

 

Social Context:

The informant heard this joke while at a Microsoft interview.  It was used to make something that is stressful and very formal, an interview, slightly more fun.

 

Cultural Context:

The joke is not accessible to those who are not computer scientists.  It would be funny in the context of an interview between two computer scientists as they would both understand the joke.  It makes fun of the absurdity of some things code does.

 

Item:

            Trevor Davis interview

Associated File:

Informants Comments:

 

The informant noted that the joke plays on the fact that whenever one does something in computer science, the first step is to reduce the process to the absolute starting position, even if that means repeating a step that has already been completed.

 

Collectors Comments:

 

The joke would most likely be interpreted differently by people not familiar with computer science.  It may seem to be a joke about computer science majors being stupid.

 

Collectors Name:

Jonah Deykin

 

 

 

 

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