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Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?

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

#411

Post by nicoburns »

gumby wrote: post #355
amingilani wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share an example of this? I could be misinterpreting this but say you're building a survey system and you need to keep track of answer types (e.g. text, date, etc) and the answer itself, how can you collapse that into one field?

Your thermos does not have a switch which you must set to "hot" or "cold" before inserting a liquid, handles solids as well as liquids, and doesn't require you to even think where the theshold might lie between the "hot" and "cold" settings. Instead it just does its best to prevent an energy exchange in either direction without having to even know the variables involved. And the "same subroutine" is basically used fo…

Yep! On of the things I point out most frequently in code reviews are things like this. However, null is an imperfect system for capturing such state. It's not self-documenting, and it breaks down when you have more than 2 states to represent.

Languages with Sum Types represent this much more elegantly with arbitrary numbers of variants and force you to check which one you have before accessing the more specific data (e.g. the filter) inside.

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

#413

Post by number6 »

isoprophlex wrote: post #348
spacemanmatt wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is funny because no one uses the factory pattern in other languages

You'd be surprised to see how many WhateverFactory classes there are in the current python project I'm working on... sigh.

Using FactoryBoy for testing?

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

#417

Post by johnchristopher »

C'est un administrateur système qui reconfigure ses variables d'environnement et paf le chemin.

I tell it like I am someone serious but a bit dumb who thinks it's really funny and is too stupid to see how dumb this is.

Only work in French and I set up the stage by being me at the beginning and telling it in front of programmer or it people and non it people so IT people have to confirm it's stupid and the joke is in how my personna thinks it's funny.

This makes me laugh.

A few usually believe I am serious.

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

#418

Post by ojathe »

johnchristopher wrote: post #417

C'est un administrateur système qui reconfigure ses variables d'environnement et paf le chemin. I tell it like I am someone serious but a bit dumb who thinks it's really funny and is too stupid to see how dumb this is. Only work in French and I set up the stage by being me at the beginning and telling it in front of programmer or it people and non it people so IT people have to confirm it's stupid and the joke is in…

I don't get it. Is it simply funny (in an absurd way) because of the usual "Paf le X" french jokes, or is there something more to it ?

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

#419

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

whoisburbansky wrote: post #252
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…

The "you learn limits in like, 9th grade" comment reminds me of this one: Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math. The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells he…

> ask the blonde waitress an integral

I know this is a fun thread, but in real life you could have serious problems if you tell this kind of jokes.

To my fellow downvoters: I hate it as much as you do.

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

#420

Post by MrPatan »

This is HN, I'm going to kill a joke instead:

There is the classic:

There are only two hard problems in computer science: Cache invalidation, naming things... and off-by-one errors!

Ha ha ha

I hate this joke. It takes one of the most insightful things ever said about the profession, makes it into a joke that isn't even that good, and now the only thing you rememebr about it is the punchline.

Let's break it down:

- Cache invalidation: State management! Distributed systems! This really gets to the core of what's hard. This is the only technical problem. For everything else you will have all the information you need at hand and it's a matter of getting the machine to do your bidding.

- Naming things: Communication! Dealing with people, whether it's you in the future or somebody else in the present is not a technical problem, but it is an even more important problem. It's unsolved. You will need to practice, think, fail, try more, and it's not even guaranteed to succeed. People are like that. It's a hard problem.

So there you have it. Probably the most insightful thing said about our job in less than fifteen words, and if you hear it, the "joke" immediately makes you think about the punchline, robbing you of the opportunity of reflecting about it.

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