Misc

Somewhere along the way, someone said that a programmer is someone who turns coffee into code. Witty, apt and amusing, but not original…rumor has it that Paul Erdos said the same thing about his fellow mathemeticians (the end product being theorems, not code). But it seems more likely it was Alfréd Rényi who originated the saying, referring to his friend Paul Erdos, who consumed copious amounts of coffee. In any case, the phrase was catchy enough that in recent years it been applied to programmers hammering out all-night coding sessions.

While that is a fitting description of many programmers, I’m just not a coffee drinker. I like an iced mocha now and then, but coffee isn’t my thing. I don’t like what the caffeine does to me. But every night owl programmer has his poison…that special concoction that fuels the fire while the rest of the world slumbers, and keeps him churning out code when he should really be asleep. For me, it’s chocolate. I am a machine that converts chocolate into code.

This site is named chocolate2code.com, with much due deference to Scott Reilly of coffee2code.com, whose WordPress plugins are in use on several of my sites, and all the great night owls of history who have churned out something — be it ideas, inventions, works of art, theorems or code — powered by their preferred beverage or delicacy.

As for the theme of the site, it is, of course, brown. I never thought my favorite color could be brown. I suppose I associated it with shades of orange, because nothing else seems to “go” with it (so I thought). Or maybe because of an unfortunate (and thankfully, short-lived) 1970’s decorating trend my parents fell for. But brown has come into it’s own in fashion and decorating the past few years, proving that there is life beyond brown and orange!

I attended a wedding a couple years ago where the bride’s colors were mauve and brown. Coffee beans and pink candles. It was unexpectedly stunning. I have since seen brown combined with aqua, pink, peach, khaki, and many other colors, to the point where it’s actually growing on me. I even own a few items of brown clothing. Dare I admit….they are my favorites.

One of my sons claimed brown as his favorite color at a very young age. I couldn’t fathom it — brown is the color of tree trunks, dirt, my hair, coffee with insufficient cream, my oak furniture, the carpet in my parent’s house, and thing or two you don’t mention in polite company. It’s not a “favorite color”. He explained his reasoning to me, however, with perfect, childish simplicity: brown is the color of chocolate.

And so with thanks to my son, the bride, and the fashion industry for opening my eyes to the beauty of brown, and in honor of UPS drivers everywhere, I have decorated the Chocolate2Code website with the truly lovely brown theme by so-and-so.

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