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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Besides being a famous mathematician he was an avid juggler. He inspired Steve Mills to invent what is known as Mills' Mess. Here is an old quote from him regarding math and juggling:

"The applications aren't the point," Graham says. "I look at mathematics pretty globally. It represents the ultimate structure and order. And I associate doing with [sic] mathematics with control. Jugglers like to be able to control a situation. There's a well-known saying in juggling: 'The trouble is that the balls go where you throw them. 'It's just you. It's not the phases of the moon, or someone else's fault. It's like chess. It's all out in the open. Mathematics is really there for you to discover."

-- Ronald Graham

Quoted from:

http://juggling.org/bin/news2html/1996/02/05-220104

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> The trouble is that the balls go where you throw them. 'It's just you.

Ditto for computer programs: they always do exactly what you tell them to do, which is rarely what you really want.

> Ditto for computer programs: they always do exactly what you tell them to do, which is rarely what you really want.

I guess this is a joke since I think you are good at programming, but on a more serious note if anyone actually has this problem they might want to change to a different language.

With a few different languages I actually feel they do what I want 99% of the time or more.

I'll leave out naming any names here as I'm not trying to change anyone who is currently happy where they are.

Every bug ever was a computer program that did exactly what the programmer told the computer to do but not what was intended. I'd like to meet the guy or girl that never coded up something with a bug, even the greats mess up.

Donald Knuth famously wrote: "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.", see also: the doctrine of testing.

> Every bug ever was a computer program that did exactly what the programmer told the computer to do [...]

Ironically, the first ever computer bug does not fit your claim [0].

[0]: https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/september/9/

I knew someone would mention that.

He co-authored this great paper on the mathematics of juggling http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~fan/ron/papers/94_01a_juggling.pdf

Wow "Mills' Mess" is one juggling move that is a real pain to learn. but some beautiful to do once you have mastered it. It goes into muscle memory.

At that point you have reached the zen of juggling.

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