Talk:Schlemiel the Painter's algorithm

Folks,

I searched wikipedia for "schlemiel the painter's algorithm", and found it listed as a "requested article", so I wrote the article (probably badly, because I've never written an encyclopedia article before), but now it's been flagged with "This article or section may contain material not appropriate for an encyclopedia."

I think this content lives in the category of "special interest encyclopedia". The article covers an "all too common and eminantly avoidable shortcoming" of many software implementations, including Notepad! If you don't believe me then open a 10 meg file in notepad... reboot. I would not expect non-programmers to be interested in the article, but then I wouldn't expect non-programmers to be interested in strcat either, and there's a perfectly good article on that.

Regarding the obtuse title... I can assure you that "a Schlemeil" is the common name for an instance of this problem in my workplace, which houses about 80 programmers. I do not know if it's a common name outside of my workplace, but do know that google finds several hundred hits for "schlemiel the painter", many of which are in the 'edu' domain... unversity lecturers have started quoting this article http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000319.html in there lecture note.

I think it's safe to say that "a Schlemiel" is a "contemporary name" for an eternal problem, which heretofore has remained nameless, and it's a problem which programmers are wanting to learn and think about... and I submit that on these grounds the topic is worthy of a Wikipedia article.

I accept that the style of the article is (in parts) inappropriate for an encylopedia... but I hope that the "under construction" tags buys me a few days to get that sorted out. I'm new at this, and I think I'm doing OK so far, getting some ideas down... could be better, but could be a lot worse.

Cheers. Keith.

Wookie2u (talk) 06:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Had a pop at fleshing out the intro, making the significance of the term clearer to a layman (e.g., me). Hope that helps... only one of the footnotes appeared at the bottom, but I can't see what I've done wrong. If anyone knows how to fix it, that'd be great.Señor Service (talk) 15:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something else occurs - the original blog article spelled it "Shlemiel" or something (certainly without a C). Don't know if that means we should use that spelling in the article...?Señor Service (talk) 16:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Think the new version is on the whole good, but the line at the beginning sounds a tiny bit holier-than-thou. If someone reverts or changes this, I think key points for inclusion at the beginning are:

The widespread nature of the problem (Spolsky saw it as a pandemic), and The fact that Spolsky blamed poor Computer Science programs for failing to start with the basics - not individual idiots.

As it was, it sounded a little bit like "A Schlemiel the Painter algorithm is something that losers do because they're stupid and don't know the first thing about progamming." 81.156.111.254 (talk) 21:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]