2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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one-banana problem
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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n. At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine
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administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the
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operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. It is
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frequently observed that the incentives that would be offered said monkeys
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can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana
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problem is simple; hence, It's only a one-banana job at the most; what's
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taking them so long? At IBM, folklore divides the world into one-, two-, and
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three-banana problems. Other cultures have different hierarchies and may
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divide them more finely; at ICL, for example, five grapes (a bunch) equals a
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banana. Their upper limit for the in-house sysape s is said to be two
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bananas and three grapes (another source claims it's three bananas and one
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grape, but observes However, this is subject to local variations, cosmic
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rays and ISO ). At a complication level any higher than that, one asks the
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manufacturers to send someone around to check things. See also
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Infinite-Monkey Theorem.
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