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Ballmer Peak
The Ballmer Peak is a humorous concept invented by Randall Munroe in the xkcd webcomic, joking that a programmer who is appropriately intoxicated (between 0.129-0.138% BAC) will achieve a high level of programming productivity; the peak occurs at 0.1337%, a reference to leet. The concept is loosely tied to former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, and is likely a play on Balmer series of hydrogen spectral lines named for the scientist Johann Balmer. A San Francisco organization, Originate, has organized a “Ballmer Peak-A-Thon”, an open bar event where people were given “5 hours to find the elusive Ballmer peak, and build the best worst business possible.” There is no scientific basis for the Ballmer Peak, though researchers have studied adjacent topics, such as the impact of inebriation on problem solving. One study identified worse programming performance with increasing blood alcohol content Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration or blood alc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programming Productivity
Programming productivity (also called software productivity or development productivity) describes the degree of the ability of individual programmers or development teams to build and evolve software systems. Productivity traditionally refers to the ratio between the quantity of software produced and the cost spent for it. Here the delicacy lies in finding a reasonable way to define software quantity. Terminology Productivity is an important topic investigated in disciplines as various as manufacturing, organizational psychology, industrial engineering, strategic management, finance, accounting, marketing and economics. Levels of analysis include the individual, the group, divisional, organizational and national levels. Due to this diversity, there is no clear-cut definition of productivity and its influencing factors, although research has been conducted for more than a century. Like in software engineering, this lack of common agreement on what actually constitutes productivity, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Randall Munroe
Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984) is an American cartoonist, author, and engineer best known as the creator of the webcomic ''xkcd''. Munroe has worked full-time on the comic since late 2006. In addition to publishing a book of the webcomic's strips, titled ''xkcd: Volume 0'', he has written four books: ''What If? (book), What If?'', ''Thing Explainer'', ''How To (book), How To,'' and ''What If? 2 (book), What If? 2''. Early life and education Munroe was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Virginia. His father worked as an engineer and marketer. He has two younger brothers and was raised as a Quakers, Quaker. He was a fan of comic strips in newspapers from an early age, starting with ''Calvin and Hobbes''. After graduating from the Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill, Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill in Midlothian, Virginia, he graduated from Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia in 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xkcd
''xkcd'' is a serial webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. Sometimes styled ''XKCD'', the comic's tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". Munroe states on the comic's website that the name of the comic is not an acronym but "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation". The subject matter of the comic varies from statements on life and love to Mathematical joke, mathematical, Programming language, programming, and science, scientific in-jokes. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references. It has a cast of stick figures, and the comic occasionally features landscapes, graphs, charts, and intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals. New cartoons are added three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with few exceptions. Munroe has released six spin-off (media), spinoff books from the comic. The first book, published in 2010 and titled ''xkcd: volume 0'', was a series of select comics from h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Alcohol Content
Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration or blood alcohol level, is a measurement of alcohol intoxication used for legal or medical purposes. BAC is expressed as mass of alcohol per volume of blood. In US and many international publications, BAC levels are written as a percentage such as 0.08%, i.e. there is 0.8 grams of alcohol per liter of blood. In different countries, the maximum permitted BAC when driving ranges from the limit of detection ( zero tolerance) to 0.08% (0.8 ). BAC levels above 0.40% (4 g/L) can be potentially fatal. Units of measurement BAC is generally defined as a fraction of weight of alcohol per volume of blood, with an SI coherent derived unit of kg/m3 or equivalently grams per liter (g/L). Countries differ in how this quantity is normally expressed. Common formats are listed in the table below. For example, the US and many international publications present BAC as a percentage, such as 0.05%. This would be interpreted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leet
Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system of suffixes and alternative meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities. The term "leet" is derived from the word '' elite'', used as an adjective to describe skill or accomplishment, especially in the fields of online gaming and computer hacking. The leet lexicon includes spellings of the word as ''1337'' or ''leet''. History Leet originated within bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 1980s,Mitchell.An Explanation of l33t Speak. where having "elite" status on a BBS allowed a user access to file folders, games, and special chat rooms. The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective has been credited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Ballmer
Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a co-founder of Ballmer Group, a philanthropic investment company. As of May 2025, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his personal wealth at around $151 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the world, and the Forbes ''Real-Time Billionaires List'' ranked him as the ninth-richest person with a net worth of $118 billion. Ballmer was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980, and subsequently left the MBA program at Stanford University. He eventually became president in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO on January 13, 2000. On February 4, 2014, Ballmer retired as CEO and was replaced by Satya Nadella; Ballmer remained on Microsoft's board of directors until August 19, 2014. Under Ballmer's leadership, a 14-year period, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balmer Series
The Balmer series, or Balmer lines in atomic physics, is one of a set of hydrogen spectral series, six named series describing the spectral line emissions of the hydrogen atom. The Balmer series is calculated using the Balmer formula, an empirical equation discovered by Johann Balmer in 1885. The visible spectrum of light from hydrogen displays four wavelengths, 410 metre#SI prefixed forms of metre, nm, 434 nm, 486 nm, and 656 nm, that correspond to emissions of photons by electrons in excited states transitioning to the quantum level described by the principal quantum number ''n'' equals 2. There are several prominent ultraviolet Balmer lines with wavelengths shorter than 400 nm. The series continues with an infinite number of lines whose wavelengths asymptotically approach the limit of 364.5 nm in the ultraviolet. After Balmer's discovery, five other hydrogen spectral series were discovered, corresponding to electrons transitioning to values of ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Balmer
Johann Jakob Balmer (1 May 1825 – 12 March 1898) was a Swiss mathematician best known for his work in physics, the Balmer series of hydrogen atom. Biography Balmer was born in Lausen, Switzerland, the son of a chief justice also named Johann Jakob Balmer. His mother was Elizabeth Rolle Balmer, and he was the oldest son. During his schooling he excelled in mathematics, and so decided to focus on that field when he attended university. He studied at the University of Karlsruhe and the University of Berlin, then completed his PhD from the University of Basel in 1849 with a dissertation on the cycloid. Johann then spent his entire life in Basel, where he taught at a school for girls. He also lectured at the University of Basel. In 1868 he married Christine Pauline Rinck at the age of 43. The couple had six children. Despite being a mathematician, Balmer is best remembered for his work on spectral series. His major contribution (made at the age of sixty, in 1885) was an empirica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Alcohol Content
Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration or blood alcohol level, is a measurement of alcohol intoxication used for legal or medical purposes. BAC is expressed as mass of alcohol per volume of blood. In US and many international publications, BAC levels are written as a percentage such as 0.08%, i.e. there is 0.8 grams of alcohol per liter of blood. In different countries, the maximum permitted BAC when driving ranges from the limit of detection ( zero tolerance) to 0.08% (0.8 ). BAC levels above 0.40% (4 g/L) can be potentially fatal. Units of measurement BAC is generally defined as a fraction of weight of alcohol per volume of blood, with an SI coherent derived unit of kg/m3 or equivalently grams per liter (g/L). Countries differ in how this quantity is normally expressed. Common formats are listed in the table below. For example, the US and many international publications present BAC as a percentage, such as 0.05%. This would be interpreted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Jargon
This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Z See also *List of computer term etymologies *Glossary of backup terms *Glossary of computer graphics *Glossary of computer science *Glossary of computer software terms *wikt:Appendi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
