International Programmers' Day!

[kiwi]

Learn about International Programmers’ Day from Palo Alto Networks Live Community. Kiwi walks you through the reasons why Programmers’ Day is celebrated and how it came to be. He also reveals why this day is so important for Palo Alto Networks. Read more about International Programmers’ Day.

 Got questions? Get answers here in the Live Community!

I'm happy to announce to all of you that today is International Programmers' Day! This is a day where we acknowledge and thank all the programmers out there for all their hard work and making life for us so much easier!

If you look up this day on the internet, you will find different dates when this day is celebrated—September 13th (12th in leap years) and January 7th. Seeing how the programmers have made our lives so much easier, it's my humble opinion that they deserve more than one day. 😉 

International Programmers' Day is also celebrated on September 13th (or 12 in leap years), which is the 256th day of the year. 256 is a special number because it is the number of distinct values that can be represented with an eight-bit byte, a value well-known to programmers.

Some programmers take it even a step further and wear nothing but white on this day because 256 is the number of colors present in the RGB color palette.

That's already two days  that programmers are celebrated, but it doesn't end there. There are programmers that celebrate this day on one of the following dates as well:

• April 4th – Anniversary of the death of Isidorus of Seville.
• 2nd Tuesday of October – Ada Lovelace Day.
• December 10th – Birthday of Ada Lovelace.

So, who exactly are these people and why are they important for programmers?

I will not give you the complete history lesson, but Isidorus of Seville is the patron saint of the internet. His fame, after his death, was mainly based on his Etymologiae, which was basically the first encyclopedia. His work was referenced centuries after it was written.

Sometimes regarded as the very first programmer, Ada Augusta (Lady Lovelace) was an English mathematician and writer who was mainly known for her work on the Analytical Engine. She was also the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine."

Do you want an extra public holiday? Of course you do! While International Programmers' Day isn't a public holiday in most countries, it has been in Russia since 2009—not on January 7 but on September 13.

Okay, that's enough history for today.

Building products for programmers is the coolest thing today!

At Palo Alto Networks, we’ve been accumulating huge amounts of data for our customers to use on their network and endpoints and as part of the Application Framework. We’re making this data available via simple APIs for programmers to leverage this intelligence in their own products and act on threats that are about to happen.

As a programmer, you can place yourself in the customer's shoes who aren't code-savvy, and you can offer them a solution in a few lines of code (admittedly, sometimes it requires a bit more than just a few lines of code). I'm not a programmer myself, but I can't recall how many times I've asked a programmer for assistance. They gave me the exact info I needed with just a few lines of code, saving me a lot of time in the process and usually followed by a satisfying smile on their face and leaving me wondering what kind of sorcery this was.

I've always been a fan of funny code. I don't always understand them because I'm not a full-fledged programmer, but when I do, I usually find them hilarious.  Here's one of my favorite ones :

> SELECT * from users WHERE clue > 0

   0 rows returned

Feel free to add your own funny code or comments in the comments section below!

Oh and don't forget to salute programmers today and thank them for their efforts (or just give them a cup of coffee or whatever).

Kiwi out!