Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Software That Insults You?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 59 posts

Re: Ask HN: Software That Insults You?

#21
MPW C compiler error messages: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/personal/humor/compile.html

    "a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program"
    "'Volatile' and 'Register' are not miscible"
    "You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler"
    "This struct already has a perfectly good definition"
    "type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you)"
    "can't go mucking with a 'void *'"
    "we already did this function"
    "This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message"
    "Too many errors on one line (make fewer)"
    "Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer"

Re: Ask HN: Software That Insults You?

#25
post #4

Not sure if it qualifies, but I find humorous the mysql --i-am-a-dummy flag. > Allow only those UPDATE and DELETE statements that specify which rows to modify by using key values.

I'm fairly sure that many long-time db admins wished that was the default setting.

I will to my dying day start writing these statements in the console like

    UPDATE whatever_table SET WHERE condition;
or

    DELETE FROM WHERE condition;
and then go back and fill in the rest.

I've long since forgotten what I originally fat-fingered to make this seem a habit worth having, but it must've really ruined my day - in any context where one or two errant keystrokes would be enough to execute the query, I never don't do it this way. Don't even have to think about it, it's just what my hands do.

Re: Ask HN: Software That Insults You?

#26
post #2

A long time ago I got an account on an old Unix machine (Irix? HP?), my first, I'd heard that you could get help by typing "man", so did so. The response was Apropos what? which I thought so snooty that I laughed out-loud, and everyone in the room looked at me as if I were some kind of nut.

  $ man
  What manual page do you want?
  For example, try 'man man'.

  $ apropos
  apropos what?
Apropos tries to find manual pages that may be relevant to the search string (which should go after "apropos").

Re: Ask HN: Software That Insults You?

#28

MPW C compiler error messages: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/personal/humor/compile.html "a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program" "'Volatile' and 'Register' are not miscible" "You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler" "This struct already has a perfectly good definition" "type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39,…

I really wish software development still had some fun like in the 80s and 90s. All the "professionalism" is taking the soul out of the job.
Post reply on HN