Love & Loops

This is part of a love & programming series.

What is the secret for a long-lasting relationship? I have no idea. Sometimes, you just meet a person and boom, six months go by when you suddenly realise you’re in a relationship with them. Once, I got into a relationship with someone who was very handsome — I was struck by his beauty and I feel slightly shameful that it is the one quality I retain from him. After a few months, I realised that

• He wasn’t particularly nice
• I couldn’t understand a word he was saying because he used really long complicated sentences that made me feel stupid
• He was always eager to make money in questionable ways, i.e sub-rent my flat while I was gone back to my hometown because my grandpa was dying. (Oh and the money would go to him, of course).

Anyway, there wasn’t much I liked about him but there was some sort of comfort. I didn’t need to think about it too much, it was just there. The same as waking up every day, making coffee, reading news, getting ready for work. As long as I could continue doing it, I did, without further questions.

The above example is an infinite loop, because true will always evaluate to true, therefore the condition will always be met. So back to our topic, I would say that to be able to evaluate how good a relationship is to oneself, we need to have certain standards and conditions.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as that. Decide on the condition before you dive into the loop. In programming like in love, you should always beware of infinite loops.