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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?

#802

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…

I'm a firefighter programmer and I liked this one.

I thought all programmers are firefighters...

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

#803

Three logisticians just finished dinner, and the waitress comes up and asks "do y'all want dessert?" The first logistician says "I don't know." The second also says "I don't know." The last says "yes, we would."

I've heard another variant of this joke: A friend asks a programmer if they'd like to go bowling or go to the movies. The programmer answers: "Yes".

I always found it funny how, in human language, when we say "or" we actually mean XOR, and had to invent "and/or" to be clear when we mean OR...

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

#804
post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Java had true garbage collection, it would collect itself.

Java is written in C, so it cannot.

Truffle went meta and they have java in java now, which gives some nice things.

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

#805
post #355

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…

100% agree - it's a quite common trap for inexperienced developers to write down every cases and conditions separately, when they shouldn't. As a similar example, instead of writing "req.source = host + port", people would write:

    if (host == "load-balancer-1.internal.dns") {
        req.source = HOSTS::LOAD_BALANCER_1;
        req.source += PORT_MAPPING[HOSTS::LOAD_BALANCER_1];
    }
    else if (host == "load-balancer-2.internal.dns") {
        // repeat
    }
After a few quarters of services, layers, and people being added and removed, it becomes a 500-line monstrosity and sits in every critical path. And because now it's a 500-line class (half of which is defunct, but good luck figuring out which half), nobody has time to read through it and figure out that it should have been a single assignment statement.

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

#808
post #548
post #220

C programmer is bartending. Someone says "get me a double whiskey, plus a root beer" Drinks arrive, customer asks: "hey why is there ice cream in this?" "I had to make it to a root beer float when you added it to the double"

There isn't any significance to the fact that it's a root beer, right? That was slightly distracting. I wonder if this would be cleaner if it was a 7-up. Do people make 7-up floats?

Yes. Try a 7-up or Sprite with lime sherbet.

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

#810

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C:##

As an Englishman, that symbol is "sharp" (or hash) which does two things. It makes the sex sound painful, then gives you a second smirk when you remember that it means "pound (£)" in American.

One possible cause of confusion in terms of a hash (#) being called pound (£) in the US was that (as I recall even in the mid-1980s) in many cases with ASCII/EBCDIC character set terminals and printers the same number code displayed as a # in the US but as a £ (pound) in the UK (eg ISO646 vs BS4730, or EBCDIC 297 vs 37).

So when cross-Atlantic conversations occurred the US would hear/read us in the UK refer to (they thought) # by the name pound, when we thought we were describing the actual pound (£) character that we were seeing on our end.

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