Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#361

Post by _kst_ » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

Many years ago, this joke appeared in an April issue of the Communications of the ACM (before the Cray 3 actually existed):

"Have you heard about the new Cray 3? It's so fast it can execute an infinite loop in about two minutes."

A coworker and I went out for lunch. Not realizing that I had already read the joke, he asked me, "So, have you heard about the new Cray 3?" I replied "Why no, how long does it take it to execute an infinite loop?"

Back at the office, he described this to our colleagues. Trying to recreate the event, he said to me, "So, have you heard about the new Cray 3?" In front of everyone else, I just said, "Why no."

"I hate you", he said.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#362

Post by mkl » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

troutpanda wrote: post #170

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first mathematician orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. "I don't serve half-beers" the bartender replies. "Excuse me?" Asks mathematician #2. "What kind of bar serves half-beers?" The bartender remarks. "That's ridiculous." "Oh c'mon" says mathematician #1 "do you know how hard it is to collect an infinite number of us? Just play along". "There are v…

I prefer snappier versions of the first half, like:

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first says, "Give me a beer." The second says, "I'll have a half a beer." The third says, "A quarter of a beer, please." The bartender pours two beers and says, "Come on, people. Know your limits."

Copy-pasted from https://owlcation.com/stem/Worst-Math-Jokes-and-Math-Puns, but there are many similar versions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#363

Post by erik_seaberg » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #360

Back when Chuck Norris facts were popular there were Jeff Dean facts, and this one is my favorite: Jeff Dean puts his pants on one leg at a time. But if he had more than two legs, you would see that his approach is actually O(log(n)). Oh, and do unintentional jokes count? Because AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean is pretty funny. https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/3.0.6.RELEASE_t...

My favorite was resolving merge conflicts: type “a y” to accept your version of the diff, “a t” to accept their version of the diff, or “a j” to accept Jeff Dean’s version of the diff.

I think another asserted that Jeff Dean can parse HTML with regular expressions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#364

Post by fuzzfactor » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

It's not easy being a geek when there's spyware and all kinds of malicious programs out there, you never know what you're going to get.

Still I'd rather have a virus on my PC than my PP.

With a trojan of course, it's the other way around.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#365

Post by nzealand » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

A software engineer, a priest, and a doctor are trying to enjoying a round of golf. Ahead of them is a group playing so slowly and inexpertly that in frustration the three ask the greenkeeper for an explanation. “That’s a group of blind firefighters,” they are told. “They lost their sight saving our clubhouse last year, so we let them play for free.”

The priest says, “I will say a prayer for them tonight.”

The doctor says, “Let me ask my ophthalmologist colleagues if anything can be done for them.”

And the software engineer says, “Why can’t they play at night?”

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#366

Post by jeffrallen » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

sli wrote: post #159

avmich wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Maybe if we all just close all windows, turn off the car, get out of the car and get back in.”

The touchscreen in my car is wonky (known issue, just haven't bothered to fix it), so when something goes sideways with the Bluetooth audio, turning the car off and back on is easily the fastest way to get my music back.

I had a Fiat Panda where the way to get power steering back after it flaked out was to do that. While driving.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#367

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

barakados wrote: post #292

troutpanda wrote: post #170

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first mathematician orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. "I don't serve half-beers" the bartender replies. "Excuse me?" Asks mathematician #2. "What kind of bar serves half-beers?" The bartender remarks. "That's ridiculous." "Oh c'mon" says mathematician #1 "do you know how hard it is to collect an infinite number of us? Just play along". "There are v…

Hey, it's not cool to steal jokes from /r/antiantijokes. I am a mod there (as evident from my username), and don't appreciate this. The joke is hilarious though.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#368

Post by invalidOrTaken » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #353

There's an old Joel on Software one related to string concatenation: Shlemiel gets a job as a street painter, painting the dotted lines down the middle of the road. On the first day he takes a can of paint out to the road and finishes 300 yards of the road. "That's pretty good!" says his boss, "you're a fast worker!" and pays him a kopeck. The next day Shlemiel only gets 150 yards done. "Well, that's not nearly as go…

The other day I was asking my data scientist brother if you run into this problem training DNN's (anyone: do you?), and ended up telling this one!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#369

Post by _kst_ » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #195

dragonwriter wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Professional ethics would compel them to instead write a function DestroyCity, to which "Baghdad" could be passed as a parameter. A common rule in the profession would be that that would only be true after they’d coded city-specific destruction functions for two previous cities, otherwise it would be premature abstraction.

Sometimes you might want to know success though. So... status = destroyCity(&city); This way, because assumingely we may mutate city in some way we’ll still have what comes after to examine, we didn’t pass the name or Od of the city, but the location itself. And we’ll know if overall our destruction worked. It’s also better if you code to MIRSA destruction.

Because passing the city by copy is way too expensive and won't destroy the original city anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

#370

Post by fuzzfactor » Thu, Jan 21, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

jacobobryant wrote: post #91

Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A: Programmers don't change light bulbs; that's a hardware problem.

Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. We'll fix it in software.

Q: How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. The application can work around it.

Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. We'll document it in the manual.

Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None. The user can figure it out.