---
title: "Geek marriage - Episode I"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/5/geek-marriage-episode-i.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/5/geek-marriage-episode-i.html"
published: "2003-10-05T22:36:00"
updated: "2003-10-05T22:36:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Oh yeah. My wife and I are real geeks(even though she won't admit it for a loong time). The other day we had a discussion about washing the dishes. I found out that she had a totally different way of washing the dishes…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Geek marriage - Episode I

By Roy Osherove October 5, 2003 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published October 5, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

Oh yeah. My wife and I are **real** geeks(even though she won't admit it for a loong time). The other day we had a discussion about washing the dishes. I found out that she had a totally different way of washing the dishes than mine:

**Her way:**

- Initial fast wash all the dishes and put them aside
- Close the faucet
- Go through each dish and scrub it with soap, then put it in the sink
- Open faucet
- Wash the soap from each dish
- Put each dish in its place
- Close faucet

**My way:**

- Put all the dirty dishes in the sink
- Open faucet
- For each dish, wash and scrub with soap under the running water, than put in place
- Close faucet

How is this geeky? Well, I went up to her and asked her: “H_oney, you seem to have a totally different algorithm than me to wash the dishes. Your algo flow is much less efficient and takes more time than mine._“ to which she replied “_Well, my algorithm saves much more water than yours, so it is less wasteful over time and energy spent in that perspective_“. I couldn't argue with that. I mean, we both had totally different algorithm “directives“ for each run. Not to mention that my dishes seem to remain a bit dirty when I'm done with them :)

I guess that's what happens when two programmers marry each other. Huh. And it didn't even _feel_ weird at the time!

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Oct 7, 2003

    ### [A big bug in Google](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/7/a-big-bug-in-google.html)

- Oct 6, 2003

    ### [.Net Blogging MVP - a myth?](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/6/net-blogging-mvp-a-myth.html)

- Oct 5, 2003

    ### [More on .Net Rocks](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/5/more-on-net-rocks.html)

- Oct 5, 2003

    ### [Scoble on .Net Rocks? Give me a break..](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/5/scoble-on-net-rocks-give-me-a-break.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/