Oski M. Wizard
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is easily my favorite CS book (although I confess it is the only one I’ve actually read). Its exercises happen to utilize characters named with double entendres: Alyssa P. Hacker (“a Lisp hacker”), Cy D. Fect (“side effect”), and Louis Reasoner (“loose reasoner”).
When I was a teaching assistant at Berkeley for its SICP-based course, I created my own character: Oski M. Wizard (“a Scheme wizard”). The name was perfect since “Oski” is the name of U.C. Berkeley’s mascot, and SICP is also known as “the wizard book” due to its cover graphic.
Sadly, he never got much exposure. I tried to get Professor Fateman to use him on one of his exams, but I think he didn’t understand the joke. (I probably should have pitched it to Professor Harvey instead.) At least I managed to use him in some practice exercises I gave to my section (which is more than I can say for another character I made, Sue D’Coda).
Poor Oski. And he so desperately wanted to impress Alyssa.
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Sue D’Kota. Sue Dakota would be even better no?
Me and SICP go way back, we used it back in this summer camp thingee I did summer after 9th grade. I still have my SICP t-shirt (got it from the MIT Press bookstore). Though it was always too small (they ran out of larger sizes) so now mostly Romina wears it.
I also loved those stupid name jokes too. I had great fun with Eileen Dover and Ben Dover in like middle school computer classes. When we wrote crappy databases in Basic.
Though the best one is still Alotta Fagina
— Ben @ September 4, 2008, 9:48 pm (PT)
Sue Dakota is brilliant. I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it. One of my students had D-apostrophe in her last name, which I guess is why that stuck in my head.
And hey, keep my weblog clean!
— James @ September 4, 2008, 11:43 pm (PT)