This weekend I was in Sweden at a wedding. Nice one, thanks! During the dinner I had the honor to talk with some very nice and interesting people. One of them was a doctor. Unfortunately I forgot to ask what kind of doctor he was but I guess there is some kind of general type, otherwise he would have said something a bit more specific, like brain surgeon.

During a speach, the speaker quoted a well known swedish football commentator that once said:

We’re going to warm up by running in rectangular circles.

Funny, because there is no such thing.

Afterwords, the doctor said something like “it’s okay, a circle is only a rectangle with an infinite number of corners”. Arghhh!!! Can a tech head let something like that slip? Of course not. Or actually yes, but I didn’t. I told him, politely.

No.

A rectangle with an infinite number of corners is not a rectangle. And even if a shape with a billion corners may look like a circle from a certain distance, it’s still not a circle!

I almost wished I hadn’t said anything. But I explained, politely, with a smile hoping to not come across as rude.

Luckily we didn’t get stuck on the topic. I think we both thought, “Arghh, engineers!”. Then we moved on to other topics.

One of my favorite things to say when someone points out a mistake I’ve made, that gives an explanation to why something doesn’t compile or behave they way I thought it would is - “Is it really THAT important” - to whatever it was. Typical programmer’s humor, only appreciated by… errh… programmers?

At a wedding, maybe a “rectangle” with an infinite amount of corners can be called a circle. It’s an occasion when it’s really not that important.

But still, it’s not a…