It’s a more easily readable drop in for A and B. And it being convention helps remove one unfamiliar element from a new topic.
Not only more readable than A and B but I would argue it’s also easier to remember who did what a few sentences or paragraphs earlier since Alice and Bob invoke slightly less generic mental images than A and B. For example one is a woman and the other one is a man, maybe even some person or character you know.
And now that I’m thinking about it, the different gender also makes it easier to keep track of who does what because different pronouns are used (at least in English and many other languages).
If you ever go to r/relationship_advice and read posts where their friend T did S with P and then A (23 F) got into with G, then yeah…Alice and Bob suddenly makes a lot of sense.
T did S with P and then A (23 F) got into with G
Old guy moment here. . .why the fuck is the camera moving all over in the place in that video? Literally unwatchable to me.
Oh, I didn’t even notice. Probably some artistic stuff, but I would prefer if it was more stable.
I guess it’s cause they’re on a cruise ship
Fun fact: the problem this is a solution to is known as the gay spock problem
I tried to look this up and while there were many many results, none of them seemed to really fit with OP’s question, so would you kindly tell us more about the gay Spock problem?
The gay spock problem is when you have two characters interacting who have the same pronouns, and it gets confusing. For example,
He brushed his hair aside and spoke gently into his ear, “you are my one true love, my light and laughter, my reason to live.”
Who’s the one speaking? Kirk or Spock?
Likewise, if Alice and Barbara or Adam and Bob are your two example people, you’ll run into the gay spock problem.
Thank you for your explanation. Google gave me a lot of insight into a lot of things and none had to do with this problem. :D
I’m afraid I’m not following. The solution to what?
Edit: Sorry, I misread your comment.
Took me a few reads
this, but doubly so with Eve. You’ll notice that we often skip over Cindy and Dave and go right to Eve, so often that I don’t even know off the top of my head whether Charlie and Deandra are the conventional names for persons 3 and 4 in this construct. That’s because this construct is used a lot when talking about secure communications and the convention is that “evil” “eavesdropping” Eve is the person trying to destroy, intercept or alter the communication between Alice and Bob. Her role is built into her name.
Someone tried “April & Bob” once, but MS excel converted it to date.
Incels 🤝 Excel
Falsely assuming something is a date
Alt text:
Changing the names would be easier, but if you’re not comfortable lying, try only making friends with people named Alice, Bob, Carol, etc.
XKCD isn’t complete without the alt text.
I love XKCDs for these
Because the names by themselves give you context about who’s transmitting to who, who’s trying to eavesdrop, and it’s become a convention.
The convention isn’t necessary, but it makes material easier to understand because of the convention
Alice: Point A
Bob: Point B
Eve: Eavesdropper
Mallory: Malicious Actor
A,B,C,D - A talks to B, C listens to A,…
Alice, Bob, Charlie,…
For this reason the first persona in my software is always Alice Litte, alice@wonderland.uk. Easier than “asfgg afshd”
Same as
foo,bar,baz🙄I hate foo bar etc, seems like a joke that was cringe that has gone on too long. When I was trying to learn programming I was like what the actual hell does this shit mean?
Same. Really thought it was a joke until I saw it all over the place. It really isn’t that hard to think of random names.
It’s better to have a convention that makes it easy to spot example names
I used to have a big list of gender ambiguous names I’d use for examples. So I’d use “Alex” and “Blake” or something like that. It also had some non-anglo names on it, just to spice things up.
In comp sci papers there’s a few other common example people. “I” for intruder or imposter (Irene, Isaac). “M” often for malicious or middle-person (Mal). There’s a few more im forgetting now.
There’s a few more im forgetting now.
‘E’ (Eve) for “eavesdropper”.
Cue the fiddler on the roof music…
Tradition!
There’s a helpful wiki article breaking down the full convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
”Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people”
— some fella on the internet“Never forget to attribute your quotes to George Carlin” - Leonard Nimoy, probably
Tradition is just dead people’s baggage. Doug Stanhope.
Thank you! I had no idea what this was talking about but was curious, so this is perfect. I appreciate it!
Rip ben bitdiddle
They’re by e2e story user names too :D
