Tech slapdown

I do love programmers from the old school, like Jason, our head of tech at the Mail & Guardian. Here’s his response to a mail from an Adsales Guy, querying the value of attending a series of Friday lectures on tech, social media, design, and so on:

On 27 Jan 2010, at 5:53 PM, Adsales Guy wrote:

> Hi,

>

> Sounds like tech stuff relevant to editorial, please advise if its at all relevant to commercial…and will escalate it through to the team

Jason’s reply:

“According to legend, a beginning student of geometry asked Euclid, ‘What shall I get by learning these things?’ Euclid called his slave, saying, ‘Give him a coin, since he must make gain out of what he learns.’

“(Source: Marvin Jay Greenberg, Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries)”

Can’t beat that for a combination of sarcasm, criticism of mercenary attitudes to knowledge, and one-upmanship. Nice one, Jason. Of course, this might affect our adsales, but hey – that’s the price you pay for standards.