[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?
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       Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes?
        
       Can be super esoteric or super generalized, I love it when I get
       them, or when I just learn something new.
        
       Author : arthurcolle
       Score  : 641 points
       Date   : 2021-01-20 19:24 UTC (1 days ago)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | koonsolo wrote:
       | The most geekiest joke ever:
       | 
       | chown -R us ./base
       | 
       | (probably for the old-timers among us ;))
        
         | jkingsbery wrote:
         | (To explain to others)
         | 
         | So now All your base are belong to us
         | (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-your-base-are-belong-
         | to-u...).
        
       | pupdogg wrote:
       | A: Have you heard about the object-oriented way to become
       | wealthy?
       | 
       | B: No
       | 
       | A: Inheritance!
        
       | cybaz wrote:
       | A programmer walks into a bar and orders
       | 1.00000000001000000...897175 root beers. The bartender says,
       | "I'll have to charge you extra; that's a root beer float". And
       | the programmer says, "In that case, make it a double".
        
       | dlkf wrote:
       | Q: How many programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A:
       | What you need is light. Why are you assuming the solution
       | involves a lightbulb?
        
       | jyriand wrote:
       | Paraphrasing, can't remember the exact joke:
       | 
       | Recruiter ask candidate developer: "So, why do you want to work
       | in our office in Mexico?"
       | 
       | "Because I want to be a senor developer"
        
       | zem wrote:
       | A byte tells his wife "Honey, I'm not feeling too well - I think
       | I have a parity error".
       | 
       | She replies "I thought you looked a bit off!"
        
       | andrewchambers wrote:
       | I don't understand why people find DNS so difficult, it's just
       | cache invalidation and naming things.
       | 
       | source: https://twitter.com/jdub/status/739110670562557952?s=20
        
         | jdub wrote:
         | Ah, I wondered why that tweet was going around again! :-)
         | 
         | A little tribute to Phil Karlton's classic. And DNS.
        
         | KMag wrote:
         | For context, I presume most of you have heard the old old joke
         | that the two hard problems of computer science are cache
         | invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. (Or the
         | older joke that the two hard problems of computer science are
         | cache invalidation and naming things.)
        
           | unsigner wrote:
           | Or that we only have one real joke, and it kinda sucks.
        
           | nanomonkey wrote:
           | >There are two hard problems in computer science: naming
           | 
           | concurrency
           | 
           | >things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.
        
             | FeepingCreature wrote:
             | No "and async." Figures.
        
       | King-Aaron wrote:
       | php
        
       | u801e wrote:
       | Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! Is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
        
       | coder4life wrote:
       | There's nothing funny about programming!
       | 
       | Okay, that said... some showing my age jokes:
       | 
       | Q: How can you tell COBOL programmer from other programmers? A:
       | They're the ones with the stubby fingers
       | 
       | Q: How is Halloween and Christmas the same? A: Because OCT 30 =
       | DEC 25! (Octal, Decimal....groan)
       | 
       | but don't listen to me, go to /r/ProgrammerHumor
       | 
       | It's early and I haven't had enough coffee
        
       | sova wrote:
       | In Futurama, Bender has a nightmare in binary, "one's and zeros
       | everywhere! ...and I think I saw a 2." Fry replies, "it was just
       | a dream Bender, there's no such thing as 2"
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOn_ySghN2Y
        
       | sytringy05 wrote:
       | The problem with TCP jokes is that people keep retelling them
       | slower until you get them
        
         | andreareina wrote:
         | Did
         | 
         | Did you
         | 
         | Did you hear
         | 
         | Did you hear the
         | 
         | Did you hear the one
         | 
         | Did you hear the one about
         | 
         | Did you hear the one about traceroute?
        
       | notadev wrote:
       | Why'd the programmer quit his job?
       | 
       | He couldn't get arrays.
        
       | jrmski wrote:
       | I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you might not get it.
        
       | dumb1224 wrote:
       | No one mentions this one? too old?:
       | 
       | Two bytes meet. The first byte asks, "Are you ill?" The second
       | byte replies, "No, just feeling a bit off."
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 1337shadow wrote:
       | Computers are like air conditioner, useful if you close windows.
        
       | jrmski wrote:
       | I'd tell you an NP complete joke, but if you've heard one you've
       | heard them all.
        
       | Abimelex wrote:
       | My favorite:
       | 
       | =====================
       | 
       | A Computer Programmer finds a frog by the side of the road.
       | 
       | The frog says, "I am actually a Princess! If you kiss me, I'll
       | revert back to my human form and be forever grateful?", the
       | programmer smiles and puts the frog back in his pocket.
       | 
       | Again, the frog says, "But I really am! I would even marry you if
       | you kiss me and turn me back into a human!", the programmer
       | chuckles and puts the frog away again.
       | 
       | Ten minutes later, the frog says, "Look, if you kiss me, I'll
       | have sex with you all day, every day. Deal?", the programmer
       | laughs and puts the frog away again.
       | 
       | He gets home, takes the now severely depressed frog out of his
       | pocket and sets it down in an aquarium. The frog looks up at the
       | coder and says, "What the fuck is wrong with you man? I offered
       | to marry you, I offered to screw you, but STILL you won't turn me
       | back into my human form."
       | 
       | The programmer says, "I'm a programmer. I don't have time for
       | relationships, or sex - but a talking frog? SO COOL!"
       | 
       | =====================
       | 
       | credits to:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/8ylptx/a_computer_pr...
        
         | elwell wrote:
         | I thought the punchline was going to be, you know you're a
         | programmer if you get hung up by the second sentence. How can
         | he "[put] the frog *back* in his pocket." the first time after
         | finding it by the road?
        
         | effie wrote:
         | Very funny!
        
         | SilasX wrote:
         | Reminds me of the joke about the talking dog at the flea market
         | where the seller thinks he duped the buyer because "the dog is
         | a liar".
         | 
         | For the topic: the programming version of the joke would be
         | where it's a disgruntled e.g. D-Wave employee selling a stolen
         | "quantum computer" at a flea market that can demonstrably break
         | RSA encryption, and he thinks he duped the buyer because "it's
         | really just a fancy classical computer".
        
       | perlgeek wrote:
       | There are 10 kinds of programmers: those who know binary, and,
       | uhm, nine others.
        
       | cwperkins wrote:
       | There are 2 hard problems in CS:
       | 
       | - Cache invalidation
       | 
       | - Naming things
       | 
       | - Off-by-1 errors
        
       | jrmski wrote:
       | I'd tell you a buffer bloat joke, but you'd have to wait in line
       | first.
        
       | musicale wrote:
       | Not really a joke but:
       | 
       | Most problems in computing can be solved by adding an additional
       | layer of abstraction or indirection
       | 
       | ...except for problems resulting from too many layers of
       | abstraction or indirection.
        
       | oli5679 wrote:
       | I really like the 'Jon Skeet facts' Stackoverflow page. It is
       | Chuck Norris style facts about the legendary Stackoverflow answer
       | contributor. Here is the top answer but I find many in the thread
       | funny.
       | 
       | - Jon Skeet is immutable. If something's going to change, it's
       | going to have to be the rest of the universe.
       | 
       | - Jon Skeet's addition operator doesn't commute; it teleports to
       | where he needs it to be.
       | 
       | - Anonymous methods and anonymous types are really all called Jon
       | Skeet. They just don't like to boast.
       | 
       | - Jon Skeet's code doesn't follow a coding convention. It is the
       | coding convention.
       | 
       | - Jon Skeet doesn't have performance bottlenecks. He just makes
       | the universe wait its turn. - Jon Skeet is the only person who
       | has ranked higher than Jon Skeet in the SO all-time rep league.
       | 
       | - Users don't mark Jon Skeet's answers as accepted. The universe
       | accepts them out of a sense of truth and justice
       | 
       | https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-fact...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | bondolo wrote:
       | I got a job as a software developer at a startup after several
       | years of working as an IT drone. On my last day of work at my old
       | job I got a text from the tech lead of the team I would be
       | joining.
       | 
       | "Come by after work to meet the team and have a few beers".
       | 
       | I arrived around 7pm. There were quite a few people still around
       | but to my surprise the tech lead who had hired me was packing up
       | his desk into a box. I was kind of surprised but he seemed upbeat
       | and glad to see me.
       | 
       | "Yeah, sorry to be leaving before you officially join the team. I
       | got a great offer I can't pass up. Friends got their A round
       | funding and it is an equity opportunity. You'll do great though.
       | One piece of advice though,"
       | 
       | and he handed me three envelopes.
       | 
       | "Four pieces actually. Piece zero, and I'll tell it to you now.
       | When you run in to trouble blame me. After you've seen my code
       | you'll probably think it is shit. Hell, you're smart, you
       | probably think everybody else's code is shit."
       | 
       | He continued "When you can't blame me anymore open the first
       | envelope for the second piece of advice. You'll know when." and
       | we went off to meet the team and have a beer.
       | 
       | I officially started on Monday and it was going great for the
       | first couple of months. Then a product manager started breathing
       | down my neck why one of my features was late. I had been
       | frustrated with how hard it was to add the feature to the
       | existing code and I found myself blurting, "The problem is not
       | with my code, it is all of the old code I am having to rewrite
       | because it is so terrible". I realized I was using the old tech
       | lead's first piece of advice. So I continued, "Man, the previous
       | tech lead's code is absolute garbage. It is amazing the whole
       | thing hasn't fallen apart already." Since everyone looked
       | sympathetic I knew I had made a good move. For quite a long time
       | I made sure I was working hard or at least look like I was
       | working hard and occasionally grumbling about the shit I had to
       | deal with.
       | 
       | After a couple of months I was still producing at a good rate but
       | I had now "rewritten" or at least claimed to have rewritten most
       | of the bad code. I could not longer use that excuse. One Monday
       | morning before the weekly sprint meeting I realized I was in a
       | bind. I needed make sure that I had lots of work on my current
       | assignment if I was going to avoid being assigned to a new
       | project with "the customer from hell". I only had a few minutes
       | before the meeting and after nervous peeing (twice) I still had
       | no solution. I suddenly remember the envelopes. Digging through
       | my messenger bag I found them and grabbed the first. While in the
       | restroom for a third nervous pee I opened the envelope sitting in
       | the stall. There was a card inside with one word "Refactor" and I
       | had my solution.
       | 
       | A few minutes later at the sprint meeting I revealed that all my
       | work rewriting the bad code, boy that was a lot of work, had
       | revealed amazing opportunities to refactor the architecture and
       | put us on a lot better footing. It would take a lot of work but I
       | knew what needed to be done and it would really pay off. This
       | proposal got a number of cautious nods and after a short
       | discussion it was decided that I would proceed with a major
       | refactoring of the product architecture.
       | 
       | A couple months later and my "refactor" was nearing completion.
       | It did fix a few problems, the new APIs were more aligned with my
       | personal preferences and I had gotten the chance to replace a few
       | libraries with trendy ones that I wanted to get on my resume.
       | Honestly though I felt like a fraud; my refactoring was just
       | rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I played out the
       | ending stages of the refactoring but inevitably the time came
       | when management was eager to use the new code in a product.
       | Having no other option I agreed it was ready and that I was eager
       | (not really) to see it shine in a product.
       | 
       | The first product to use it would be with another team. After the
       | first meeting it was clear that they were really sharp and they
       | immediately pointed out some shortcomings of my APIs and design.
       | After a bit more wrangling they agreed that my module could meet
       | their needs as long as I was dedicated to supporting it and them.
       | My management agreed and they were now my customer.
       | 
       | Their product design proceeded and as they continued to get more
       | experience with my module they kept finding new flaws in the API
       | and bugs. I tried to fix them as quickly as possible but I was
       | one person working to try to keep an entire team happy. I
       | couldn't keep up. After a late night of bug fixing I was headed
       | home exhausted in an Uber and wondering how I was going to be
       | able to keep up. As I nearly drifted into sleep in the back seat
       | I remembered the envelopes. I found the second envelope in my bag
       | and opened it with the third solution, again one word.
       | "Indirection".
       | 
       | Meeting with my "customer" on Monday I explained the bandwidth
       | problems I was having meeting all of their team's requirements. I
       | explained that what would work best is if they built a local
       | interface in their project which called my API. That way the
       | interaction between their system and mine would be localized and
       | they would only have to make changes in one place if my API had
       | to change. They had seen that I was tapped out trying to support
       | them and agreed that they could build a local API which meshed
       | better with their system that simply called my module to do the
       | actual work. It took them a while to disentangle their code from
       | my module and build their interface. By the time they came back
       | with a few bug reports against the version of my module they had
       | been using I promised them that I had much improved version to
       | use. Once a few bugs were resolved the systems were again
       | integrated.
       | 
       | They got closer to shipping their product and I kept getting bug
       | reports from them that my library wasn't behaving correctly. I
       | was forced to explain that the problems they described hadn't
       | been there when they had integrated directly against my library--
       | the problem must be in their local interface. Progress was being
       | made towards shipping the product but there were still frequent
       | mysterious problems.
       | 
       | Meanwhile my management was pretty happy with how integration of
       | my code was proceeding. My director had talked about it as a
       | collaboration success story at an executive meeting. My team
       | members, who I had little interaction with as I was supporting
       | the other team, were also congratulatory though they didn't seem
       | to be as believing that I deserved my apparent success. I was
       | pretty sure it was going to be a disaster actually. So when a
       | college buddy emailed me about a business plan he was writing I
       | offered to help. A few days later they were talking about me
       | being the "Software VP" for their startup. I wasn't sure but it
       | would be a founder position with equity so I couldn't just say
       | no. I was trying to figure out what to do when I got an email
       | saying that the team building a product with my module was having
       | real problems with their scaling tests. They had done some
       | analysis and were certain the problem was with my module, they
       | didn't have proof, but had some pretty compelling analysis and
       | wanted to meet tomorrow. Gulp. Just then my manager came by,
       | apparently not having read the memo yet and introduced me to a
       | fresh young programmer who was joining the team. He introduced me
       | as one of the team's stars and he should seek me out for
       | mentoring. I politely agreed but had other things on my mind.
       | 
       | Stewing in my cube without much clue how to fix the reported
       | problems before the upcoming meeting I thought back to mentoring
       | I had received and realized I had one more envelope.
       | 
       | Opening the third envelope I discovered the fourth piece of
       | advice. It was brilliant. I called my friend and told him I was
       | "down" to be the software VP for their startup, contacted the new
       | kid on our team slack inviting them to come by for an overview on
       | my module. I then sat down wrote my resignation email and
       | completed the fourth piece of advice, "Recursion."
        
         | andredz wrote:
         | Haha, I didn't imagine what the second envelope would contain,
         | but I did imagine that it would end with a recursive situation.
        
       | das_keyboard wrote:
       | This one was recently on the HN front page:
       | 
       | https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/users-lightbulb.en.html
       | 
       | HN-Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25369929
        
       | mcqueenjordan wrote:
       | The only thing worse than a monorepo? Two monorepos.
        
       | bcrosby95 wrote:
       | Lots of UDP jokes, the variant I was told is:
       | 
       | What is the best thing about telling a UDP joke? You don't care
       | if anyone gets it.
        
         | dragosmocrii wrote:
         | Ah, "UDP humour" - story of my life
        
       | eigenvalue wrote:
       | Why do programmers confuse Christmas and Halloween? Because OCT
       | 31 == DEC 25
        
       | dotdi wrote:
       | Knock knock.
       | 
       | Race condition.
       | 
       | Who's there?
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | The computer salesman was trying to convince the CEO to buy the
       | horribly expensive mainframe.
       | 
       | "It can answer _any_ question! Just try it! " The CEO thinks a
       | minute, and asks "OK, what's my father doing right now?" The
       | computer grinds away for awhile, and answers "Your father is
       | fishing in Michigan." The CEO chortles to the salesman "Wrong! My
       | father died five years ago!" The computer answers "Your mothers
       | husband died five years ago. Your father just landed a 10 pound
       | trout."
        
       | fctorial wrote:
       | MongoDB is webscale:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Too soon, man. Too soon.
        
         | closeparen wrote:
         | The medical profession's use of this format is also hilarious:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rTsvb2ef5k
        
         | krylon wrote:
         | I almost messed my pants watching this! It's hilarious! Thanks!
        
       | gramie wrote:
       | What's the difference between an introverted programmer and an
       | extroverted programmer?
       | 
       | The extroverted programmer looks at _your_ shoes when he 's
       | talking to you.
        
         | sparks1970 wrote:
         | Best one yet!
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | This is an oldie (I first heard it in the 80s) but is one of my
       | all time favorites. While it can be told about any two classes of
       | people it really applies to a lot of code I encounter:
       | A physicist is showing a thermos to her friend, a programmer.
       | "It's amazing", she said.  "You put a cold drink inside and
       | regardless of how hot it is outside the drink stays cold".
       | The programmer is suitably impressed.            "But that's not
       | all", she continued.  "You can put a *hot* drink inside and no
       | matter how cold it is outside the drink stays hot".
       | Now the programmer is perplexed.            Plaintively he asks,
       | "But how does it know?"
       | 
       | I think of this whenever I read code that contains a gratuitous
       | state variable that explains the type or content of some data
       | structure rather than make the data structure self-explaining.
       | Even more annoying when it's a class.
       | 
       | Having to coordinate _two_ variables is a recipe for bugs down
       | the road. Seems like it should be a beginner 's mistake but I see
       | it all the time in "non beginner" code.
        
         | kilnr wrote:
         | Love the joke, but to me it points to something else than
         | gratuitous state variables. I think of it as "if all you have
         | is a hammer, everything looks like a nail", with the hammer
         | being "procedurally solving problems".
        
           | m463 wrote:
           | Just the same, I wish make were a little more procedural.
        
         | amingilani wrote:
         | 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?
        
           | novembermike wrote:
           | In something like typescript you could represent this as a
           | union type. If I'm expecting a location I could take a string
           | ("Baghdad"), lat long pairs, an enum, etc. With a union type
           | I can specify that it could be any of these but they fill the
           | same purpose. In Java I'd either do method overloading or
           | expect to receive an object that implements a method that
           | would give the location in a common format. The wrong way to
           | do it would be to have a function that has both a lat/long
           | input and a string input and just say that they're nullable
           | and we only expect to get one of them.
        
           | gumby wrote:
           | 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 for
           | different sized thermoses.
           | 
           | In code I see people not understand this all the time. Here's
           | an example: let's say you present the user with their
           | previous orders, and give them the option to filter those
           | orders by some criterion.
           | 
           | The shitty way to do this is to have two variables:
           | Filter* orderFilter = NULL;         bool filterSpecified =
           | false;              void setOrderFilter (filter* newFilter) {
           | orderFilter = newFilter;           filterSpecified = true;
           | }
           | 
           | So instead of just checking if a filter has been assigned,
           | you have a separate boolean. What happens if the boolean is
           | true but the filter is null? What would the vice versa case
           | even mean?
           | 
           | The global codebase is riddled with dumb errors like this.
        
             | gfody wrote:
             | this is the essence of Linus Torvald's doctrine of good
             | taste
        
             | wruza wrote:
             | I deeply disagree!
             | 
             | Our code is riddled with heavily overloaded meanings in a
             | single value/domain, and if you have a variety of filters,
             | you end up with this atrocity:                 Foo *f1; //
             | hey, just test for NULL       double f2; // hey, just use
             | isnan()            int f3; // aaaaah, crap       bool
             | f3_specified; // god why            std::string f4;
             | // requires heavy drugs to solve existential catastrophes
             | 
             | Compare that to                 template <typename T>
             | struct Filter {         bool is_specified;         T value;
             | };            Filter<Foo *> f1;       Filter<double> f2;
             | Filter<int> f3;       Filter<std::string> f4;
             | 
             | And the variety of code that has to work with either of
             | these examples.
             | 
             |  _What happens if the boolean is true but the filter is
             | null?_
             | 
             | An assertion fails miserably.
             | 
             |  _What would the vice versa case even mean?_
             | 
             | That an assertion failed miserably.
             | 
             | What happens if the filter is one? Minus one? Equals to
             | PC(IP), BP? If NULL filter has to search for NULL values in
             | a dataset? If we are looking for NAN values in a corrupted
             | one (this one is even more tricky)?
             | 
             | Deeply!
        
               | gugagore wrote:
               | I'm not sure they were suggesting using type-specific
               | sentinel values (like null and nan), but to always use
               | null or point to a value.
               | 
               | I like wrapping the information in a data structure
               | exactly as you suggested, and if you never mutate the
               | dereferenced pointer, it's equivalent to what they
               | proposed. Big if, though.
               | 
               | The best is to do this generically with
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_type , since this
               | pattern comes up regularly, not just with this one domain
               | concept of "Filter"
        
             | zbuf wrote:
             | Even better, let's just have the default orderFilter be the
             | equivalent of '*'.
             | 
             | If there's always a filter, then there's no longer a branch
             | at the point it's used -- that needs to be tested and
             | maintained.
             | 
             | I used to work with a programmer who I found difficult
             | because their code was an ever-increasing number of "if"
             | statements as each new case came along. Conversely he would
             | say coding is relatively easy and that I was
             | overcomplicating a problem by thinking about it; all I
             | needed to do is "add an if statement here".
        
             | elwell wrote:
             | I think this is one of the areas that functional
             | programming naturally steers the programmer in the right
             | direction.
        
             | nicoburns wrote:
             | 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.
        
             | yongjik wrote:
             | 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.
        
             | foota wrote:
             | Another way of expressing this concept is to "make invalid
             | states unrepresentable"
        
             | User23 wrote:
             | Dijkstra's EWDs are full of examples of thinking about
             | problems mathematically instead of operationally and then
             | deriving elegant procedures.
        
               | alanbernstein wrote:
               | Do you have any examples to point to?
        
             | roelschroeven wrote:
             | Having the two separated gives the ability to disable/re-
             | enable the filter without losing it. That's often very
             | useful. In other cases you're very right.
        
               | diarrhea wrote:
               | Then you'd go with `filter_enabled` or similar, which is
               | an entirely different, separate flag. It is not coupled
               | to what the filter itself looks like.
        
           | numlocked wrote:
           | I think they are referring to this sort of thing (the reader
           | will have to use their imagination and assume there is
           | additional functionality in this class):
           | class ReadingMaterial:         is_magazine = False
           | def is_periodical():           return is_magazine
           | 
           | Using a base class (e.g. a Magazine and a Book class, or
           | something) and inheritance, is much clearer than monkeying
           | around with state.
        
           | layoutIfNeeded wrote:
           | In graphics programming the typical example of this pattern
           | would be when someone does bespoke computations on
           | coordinates with a bunch of if-elses instead of deriving the
           | proper matrix equation that "just works" due to math.
        
           | winrid wrote:
           | You have an Answer object that probably contains a type enum.
           | 
           | However, you don't need to name all variables "answerObject".
        
         | knodi123 wrote:
         | But How Do It Know? Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone
         | 
         | https://smile.amazon.com/But-How-Know-Principles-Computers/d...
        
           | hedberg10 wrote:
           | Thank you, that was where I remembered that sentence from..
           | Great book!
        
         | randcraw wrote:
         | I first heard this joke at an AI conference...
         | 
         | "An engineer, a physicist, a mathematician, and an AI
         | researcher were asked to name the greatest invention of all
         | time.
         | 
         | The engineer chose fire, which gave humanity power over matter.
         | The physicist chose the wheel, which gave humanity the power
         | over space. The mathematician chose the alphabet, which gave
         | humanity power over symbols. The AI researcher chose the
         | thermos bottle.
         | 
         | "Why a thermos bottle?" the others asked. "Because the thermos
         | keeps hot liquids hot in winter and cold liquids cold in
         | summer.", said the AI researcher. "Yes - so what?" "Think about
         | it.", intoned the researcher reverently. "That little bottle -
         | how does it know?"
        
         | dmingod666 wrote:
         | 0 if the bottle is empty.
         | 
         | 1 if its hot.
         | 
         | -1 when its cold :D
        
           | ljm wrote:
           | FileNotFound if it's none of those
        
             | mrob wrote:
             | As reported in the famous Daily WTF post:
             | 
             | https://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_
        
           | the_gipsy wrote:
           | Ah yes the triple-boolean
        
             | rzzzt wrote:
             | A ternary logic computer to go with it:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun
        
             | sethammons wrote:
             | Reminds me of our five value boolean we used to have:
             | is_deleted. Woe to person who expected that to be 1 or 0.
             | Five distinct and overloaded values were possible, though I
             | now forget them. Probably something like pending, fully
             | deleted, being restored, not deleted, and restored.
        
               | dmingod666 wrote:
               | like linux app return codes.
        
       | triceratops wrote:
       | Sometimes when I'm writing JavaScript I feel like throwing my
       | hands up and saying "This is bullshit!" But I never know what
       | "this" refers to.
        
       | codehd7 wrote:
       | Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A:
       | Zero; it's a hardware problem.
        
       | jacobobryant wrote:
       | Q: How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
       | 
       | A: Programmers don't change light bulbs; that's a hardware
       | problem.
        
         | jonathankoren wrote:
         | Q: How many Google engineers does it take to change a light
         | bulb?
         | 
         | A: None. They just change the standard to dark.
         | 
         | ----------
         | 
         | Originally (circa 1998) this was Microsoft joke, but this is a
         | good update.
        
           | BugWatch wrote:
           | Alternative Answer: None, they'll just google-graveyard the
           | electricity service.
        
         | EliasY wrote:
         | Q: How many prolog programmers does it take to change a light
         | bulb?
         | 
         | A: No.
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | SilasX wrote:
         | Q: How many Haskell programmers does it take to change a light
         | bulb?
         | 
         | A: Irrelevant, that's a side effect.
        
       | jacobkranz wrote:
       | The two hardest problems a programmer faces:
       | 
       | 1) what to name your variables
       | 
       | 2) cache invalidation errors
       | 
       | 3) off-by-one errors
        
         | nl wrote:
         | > 1) what to name your variables
         | 
         | The canonical version of this is "naming things". It's more
         | general than just variable names as anyone who has dealt with a
         | thingAbstractFactoryFactory or the problem of generating unique
         | names in a distributed environment will attest.
        
       | mayoff wrote:
       | What's it like to have sex with a programmer? Nobody knows. They
       | just sit on the edge of the bed telling you how great it's going
       | to be.
        
         | invalidOrTaken wrote:
         | underrated
        
           | deelly wrote:
           | is this joke originally about politic?
        
       | probinso wrote:
       | !1
        
       | kiliantics wrote:
       | I'm a big fan of the "Ed is the standard text editor." joke
        
       | godmode2019 wrote:
       | The economy turns bad and a programmer has to become a hammer
       | hand to pay his rent. The builders are working on a new house,
       | how do you tell them apart?
        
       | thedanbob wrote:
       | XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you're
       | not using enough of it.
        
         | throwawybillion wrote:
         | Or: it's never the answer
        
           | TimSchumann wrote:
           | Seems expedient at the time but always comes back to haunt
           | you.
        
       | cheezeburger wrote:
       | I have a UDP joke but I'm not sure you'd get it.
        
       | vz8 wrote:
       | git pull: open source skeet shooting
        
       | mpls wrote:
       | I've been working on getting our Java code running on Windows.
       | It's going alright, but I had to shut off the garbage collector
       | altogether - whenever it runs, all of our JARs end up in the
       | Recycle Bin.
        
         | deelly wrote:
         | Oh, thats a new one, and about Java and actually funny!
        
       | moo2121 wrote:
       | Trump
        
       | byteface wrote:
       | 2 that make me chuckle...
       | 
       | If you ask a programmer, 'Do you want tea or coffee?' he will
       | reply 'yes'.
       | 
       | and
       | 
       | q: What's Benoit B. Mandelbrot's middle name? a: Benoit B.
       | Mandelbrot
        
       | robertbalent wrote:
       | Why do Java programmers wear glasses? Because they don't C#.
        
       | shakezula wrote:
       | My favorite programming joke goes something like
       | 
       | TCP in the streets UDP in the sheets
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | "Simple, it's a monoid in the category of endofunctors."
        
       | throwaway_dcnt wrote:
       | This isn't exactly a programming joke but considering how many of
       | us physics majors become programmers, I think it works:
       | 
       | Heisenberg, Shrodinger and Ohm were driving down a highway when
       | they get pulled over by a cop. The cop asks Heisenberg if he knew
       | how fast he was going, as you can surmise, he claimed he didn't
       | know because he knew exactly where they were. The cop, finding
       | this suspicious (and because this is not USA and 4th amendment
       | does not apply) decides to search the car. He comes back to the
       | front and asks them why they have a dead cat in the trunk,
       | Shrodinger responds, "because you opened the trunk you fool!!".
       | The cop is now irritated and promptly moves to arrest all three.
       | Ohm, resisted.
        
         | kchr wrote:
         | Best one so far!
        
         | VintageCool wrote:
         | My preferred version:
         | 
         | Heisenberg and Schrodinger are driving down the road when they
         | hit a bump.
         | 
         | Schrodinger says: I think you ran over a cat!
         | 
         | Heisenberg: Is the cat dead?
         | 
         | Schrodinger: I can't be certain.
        
       | moo2121 wrote:
       | Trump is the biggest joke ever in the history of this country.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jdeisenberg wrote:
       | In Europe, the surname of Niklaus Wirth (inventor of the Pascal
       | programming language) is pronounced "veert"; in the United
       | States, it's pronounced "worth."
       | 
       | Thus, in Europe, he's called by name; in the US he's called by
       | value.
        
         | wnoise wrote:
         | The meaner version explicitly says Niklaus, and Nickle's as
         | well.
        
           | andrewaylett wrote:
           | This was the original:
           | 
           | Whereas Europeans generally pronounce his name the right way
           | ('Nick-louse Veert'), Americans invariably mangle it into
           | 'Nickel's Worth.' This is to say that Europeans call him by
           | name, but Americans call him by value.
           | 
           | - Introduction by Adriaan van Wijngaarden at the IFIP
           | Congress (1965).
           | (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth)
        
       | michalc wrote:
       | My favourite:
       | 
       | "What do we want?"
       | 
       | "Now!"
       | 
       | "When do we want it?"
       | 
       | "Fewer race conditions!"
        
         | swills wrote:
         | What do we want?
         | 
         | Time Travel!
         | 
         | When do we want it?
         | 
         | Doesn't matter!
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Besides being a great joke, it explains the concept perfectly.
        
           | quickthrower2 wrote:
           | For time travelling race conditions yes!
        
         | sudeepj wrote:
         | This actually is very clever!
        
       | breck wrote:
       | A perfect function has zero params, a great function has one
       | param, and a buggy function
        
       | erik_seaberg wrote:
       | It's bigger than a joke but pretty funny:
       | http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
       | 
       | Money quote: "Also, the bridge was designed as a suspension
       | bridge, but nobody actually knew how to build a suspension
       | bridge, so they got halfway through it and then just added extra
       | support columns to keep the thing standing, but they left the
       | suspension cables because they're still sort of holding up parts
       | of the bridge[...] Would you drive across this bridge? No. If it
       | somehow got built, everybody involved would be executed."
        
       | ajxs wrote:
       | (Not my joke)
       | 
       | At a recent real-time Java conference, the participants were
       | given an awkward question to answer: "If you had just boarded an
       | airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been
       | responsible for the flight control software, how many of you
       | would disembark immediately?" Among the forest of raised hands
       | only one man sat motionless. When asked what he would do, he
       | replied that he would be quite content to stay aboard. With his
       | team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as
       | far as the runway, let alone take off.
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | This is a joke, but this was a literal chat conversation that
         | happened between Boeing engineers in regards for the 737 MAX 8.
         | 
         | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/business/boeing-737-messa...
        
         | 2rsf wrote:
         | I thought that 'real-time Java' was the joke
        
         | minikomi wrote:
         | I thought the punchline was going to be about waiting for
         | garbage collection to finish
        
           | young_unixer wrote:
           | If Java had true garbage collection, it would collect itself.
        
             | drran wrote:
             | Java is written in C, so it cannot.
        
               | mirekrusin wrote:
               | Truffle went meta and they have java in java now, which
               | gives some nice things.
        
         | Xcelerate wrote:
         | It wasn't until I started working with some of the top software
         | engineers in the industry that I became afraid of flying.
        
         | moontear wrote:
         | If the plane were my machine there would be no danger.
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | Reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke's first published short story
         | _Travel by Wire!_
        
         | bmgxyz wrote:
         | I know this joke, but in the version I've heard it's mechanical
         | engineering students instead of programmers, their professors
         | instead of conference participants, and the aircraft itself
         | instead of the flight control software.
         | 
         | But the structure is the same.
        
       | Negitivefrags wrote:
       | Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified
       | explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or
       | arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
        
       | ch3ckmat3 wrote:
       | 3 DBAs walk into a NoSQL bar. A little while later they walk out
       | because they couldn't find a table.
        
       | lukewrites wrote:
       | What's the angriest part of a computer?
       | 
       | The cursor.
        
       | ArchieMaclean wrote:
       | Programmer: I'm going out for a walk.
       | 
       | Programmer's partner: While you're out, could you buy some milk?
       | 
       | And the programmer never returned.
        
       | MattyRad wrote:
       | Everything in https://programmerryangosling.tumblr.com/ is good
       | for a chuckle
        
       | hackerbob wrote:
       | Why did the programmer leave the restaurant?
       | 
       | He didn't like the table layout.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tsimionescu wrote:
       | 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 good as yesterday, but you're still a fast worker. 150
       | yards is respectable," and pays him a kopeck.
       | 
       | The next day Shlemiel paints 30 yards of the road. "Only 30!"
       | shouts his boss. "That's unacceptable! On the first day you did
       | ten times that much work! What's going on?" "I can't help it,"
       | says Shlemiel. "Every day I get farther and farther away from the
       | paint can!"
        
         | ifdefdebug wrote:
         | Nice plot twist. I thought this one was going to be about
         | optimizing the work that has to be done for one kopeck.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | There's something about strcat there somewhere.
        
         | kieckerjan wrote:
         | Now this would be funny if it did not bring up painful
         | memories. :-)
        
         | grandchild wrote:
         | This could be a metaphor for how a greenfield project turns
         | into a tiresome upkeep effort, after the initial creativity
         | gets further and further buried under the maintenance strain.
        
         | invalidOrTaken wrote:
         | 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!
        
           | lordgrenville wrote:
           | IIUC you generally train on a sliding window of most recent
           | data. That or just keep adding GPUs...
        
             | alanbernstein wrote:
             | Every day I get farther from the GPU shop!
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | methyl wrote:
         | This also applies to pagination based on offset/limit
        
       | christophilus wrote:
       | SCRUM
        
       | hirundo wrote:
       | I bought a giant bottle of shampoo at Costco and it almost killed
       | me by hypothermia. I started the shower then made the mistake of
       | reading the instructions. It said lather, rinse, repeat.
        
       | h3mb3 wrote:
       | A PM and an engineer walk into a meeting room to discuss why the
       | feature request cannot be implemented with their microservice
       | architecture:
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/y8OnoxKotPQ
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | bash.org
        
       | tilolebo wrote:
       | A programmer had a problem. He thought to himself: "I know, I'll
       | solve this with threads!"
       | 
       | has Now problems. two he
        
         | CGamesPlay wrote:
         | This one always bugs me because it says "two" but this output
         | couldn't be produced with fewer than 3 threads.
        
           | axaxs wrote:
           | Fair point if you read it literally and assume each thread is
           | a problem. But I assume, as it's a variation of the regex
           | joke, 'using threads' is seen as a singular thing. Perhaps it
           | should say 'threading?'
        
         | imglorp wrote:
         | Then he thought he'd use Java. Now he has a ProblemFactory.
        
           | spacemanmatt wrote:
           | This is funny because no one uses the factory pattern in
           | other languages
        
             | isoprophlex wrote:
             | You'd be surprised to see how many WhateverFactory classes
             | there are in the current python project I'm working on...
             | sigh.
        
               | number6 wrote:
               | Using FactoryBoy for testing?
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | Well, to a first approximation, no, nobody uses the factory
             | pattern in other languages.
             | 
             | Once in a long while you see one in C# or C++. But the
             | people making fun of Java aren't comparing it with C# and
             | C++.
        
             | marco_craveiro wrote:
             | Reminds me of the old FactoryFactoryFactory joke [1]
             | 
             | [1] https://gist.github.com/nkbt/4691b1ae3e78a6141aea
        
               | imglorp wrote:
               | > "This thing comes with documentation, right?"
               | 
               | This is the most painful part for me. If you're trying to
               | understand some code written in Gratuitous Object
               | Astronautics style, it's almost universally assumed
               | you're fully aware of why the product contains hammer
               | factory factory factories, how factories work, and how
               | get an actual hammer to swing.
               | 
               | The Gratuitous Object Astronautics culture is so
               | accustomed to all the nonfunctional boilerplate that
               | skilled, self-gratifying, astronauts never need to
               | document their cleverness. This leaves casual tourists in
               | the dark, which is a problem in any organization.
        
             | sheikheddy wrote:
             | Sadly I've seen it used in Scala
        
         | cupofcoffee wrote:
         | lmfao
        
         | oars wrote:
         | Best one.
        
         | DarkWiiPlayer wrote:
         | Fuck threadsing
        
       | wglb wrote:
       | (Maybe more of a math joke)
       | 
       | There are aleph null bottles of beer on the wall, take one down,
       | pass it around, aleph null bottles of beer on the wall.
        
       | patal wrote:
       | Q: What's the difference between Ant and Maven?
       | 
       | A: The creator of Ant has apologized.
       | 
       | (https://twitter.com/technomancy/status/10994115673)
        
       | hooby wrote:
       | "God is real!" "Unless declared integer."
        
       | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
       | Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?
       | 
       | Yes, I'd like to hear a TCP joke.
       | 
       | OK, I'll tell you a TCP joke.
       | 
       | OK, I'll hear a TCP joke.
       | 
       | Are you ready to hear a TCP joke?
       | 
       | Yes, I am ready to hear a TCP joke.
       | 
       | OK, I'm about to send the TCP joke. It will last 10 seconds, it
       | has two characters, it does not have a setting, it ends with a
       | punchline.
       | 
       | OK, I'm ready to hear the TCP joke that will last 10 seconds, has
       | two characters, does not have a setting and will end with a
       | punchline.
       | 
       | I'm sorry, your connection has timed out...
       | 
       | Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?
       | 
       | (Credits to whoever first came up with this.)
        
         | teraflop wrote:
         | "HEY, DOES ANYBODY KNOW A GOOD ARP JOKE?"
        
         | melenaos wrote:
         | I would say UTP joke but i am not sure if anyone catch it.
        
           | sidpatil wrote:
           | You've got a twisted sense of humor.
        
         | chrisshroba wrote:
         | Would you like to hear a UDP jo
        
       | linsomniac wrote:
       | Whereas Europeans generally pronounce his name the right way
       | ('Nick-louse Veert'), Americans invariably mangle it into
       | 'Nickel's Worth.' This is to say that Europeans call him by name,
       | but Americans call him by value.
        
       | oli5679 wrote:
       | Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll
       | use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
        
       | gdubs wrote:
       | The two hardest things in computer science are cache
       | invalidation, naming things, and off by one errors.
        
       | forgotmypw17 wrote:
       | Q: Why does the sun always rise east in the morning and set west
       | in the evening?
       | 
       | A: Just leave it alone and don't mess with it.
        
         | th0ma5 wrote:
         | OMG hahahahahah thanks for this one
        
       | mistersquid wrote:
       | One of my all time favorites. Can't remember where I first read
       | it (Quora?), but it's currently my top Google hit for "balloon
       | programmer project manager joke". [0]
       | 
       | ============
       | 
       | A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He
       | reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon
       | further and shouts:
       | 
       | "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet
       | him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
       | 
       | The man below says, "Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering
       | approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42
       | degrees North latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West
       | longitude."
       | 
       | "You must be a programmer," says the balloonist.
       | 
       | "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
       | 
       | "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is
       | technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your
       | information, and the fact is I am still lost."
       | 
       | The man below says, "You must be a project manager"
       | 
       | "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
       | 
       | "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you
       | are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to
       | keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you
       | are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now
       | it is somehow my fault."
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/2rn8qx/i_h...
        
         | tsoukase wrote:
         | I also enjoy a similar one where instead of the programmer
         | stands a statistician and instead of project manager a
         | principal investigator. Source:
         | https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/12745
        
         | hutzlibu wrote:
         | Thats a rehash of an old joke:
         | 
         | I know it soviet style:
         | 
         | A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a
         | air balloon and are lost.
         | 
         | They encounter a man walking below:
         | 
         | The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?"
         | 
         | "..." the man looks up and says nothing
         | 
         | The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we are!"
         | 
         | "..." after a while the man says: "in a balloon".
         | 
         | The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a philosopher. The
         | others: "how do you know?"
         | 
         | "Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his
         | answer is correct with our objective reality. And lastly, his
         | answer is completely useless to us."
         | 
         | (in eastern soviet republics, philosophy was not in high
         | regards, because the peoples governments were supposed to be
         | philosophical (a la Marx) government, with in theory, very high
         | standards)
        
           | plasticchris wrote:
           | I heard this one but it's a mathematician and a physicist in
           | the balloon, and the physicist says the person must be a
           | mathematician. As told by a math professor...
        
           | lb1lf wrote:
           | A Soviet engineer needs some plumbing done in his apartment,
           | and calls for a plumber. The plumber arrives, does his thing,
           | and hands over the bill.
           | 
           | The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of
           | what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???'
           | 
           | Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy
           | work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep
           | mum about your degree, as we're not supposed to hire
           | academics.'
           | 
           | Our engineer contemplates this for a while, applies for a job
           | as a plumber - and gets it.
           | 
           | All is well, good money, no responsibilites - until
           | management requires that they take evening school classes to
           | gain new skills and thus better build socialism. So,
           | grudgingly, our engineer enrolls in a math class and, upon
           | arriving, finds that the teacher wants to establish what the
           | plumbers already know.
           | 
           | -'You over there - could you please come to the blackboard
           | and show us the formula for the area of a circle?' he asks
           | our engineer.
           | 
           | Standing at the blackboard, he suddenly realizes he can't for
           | the life of him remember the formula; while a bit rusty, he
           | soon figures out how to reason it out - furiously writing out
           | integrals on the blackboard, only to find the area of a
           | circle is -(pi)*r^2.
           | 
           | Minus? How did a negative enter into it, he thinks, going
           | over his calculations once again. No, still gets the same
           | result. Sweat building, he turns away from the blackboard for
           | a moment, turning to the other plumbers watching.
           | 
           | As in one voice, they all whisper -'Comrade, you must switch
           | the limits to the integral!'
        
             | smlckz wrote:
             | I think the integral is                       4 * integrate
             | sqrt(r^2 - x^2) w.r.t. x from x=0 to x=r
             | 
             | which is from the equation of circle with radius r centered
             | at the origin:                       x^2 + y^2 = r^2
             | => y = sqrt(r^2 - x^2)
             | 
             | any other way achieve the same using integration?
        
               | sriku wrote:
               | \int_0^2p{(1/2)r^2dth}
               | 
               | Value inside the integral is area of thin triangle of
               | height r and base rdth.
        
             | benibela wrote:
             | American version from below:
             | 
             | 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
             | her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned,
             | he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has
             | to do is answer one third x cubed.
             | 
             | She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"?
             | 
             | He repeats "one third x cubed".
             | 
             | She says, "one thir dex cuebd"?
             | 
             | Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off
             | mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".
             | 
             | The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to
             | prove his point, that most people do know something about
             | basic math. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an
             | integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man
             | calls over the waitress and asks "what is the integral of x
             | squared?".
             | 
             | The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking
             | away, turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a
             | constant!"
        
             | baud147258 wrote:
             | I think I had already heard that one from a math teacher
        
             | stevage wrote:
             | I don't quite get the punchline. I understand how if you
             | integrate in the wrong direction you get a negative area,
             | but is there a double meaning here?
        
               | lb1lf wrote:
               | -The idea is that all the plumbers are academics looking
               | for the easy life. :)
        
               | ayepif wrote:
               | They're all former academics/mathematicians!
        
               | infomax wrote:
               | They are all engineers in disguise.
        
               | shard wrote:
               | I believe the implication is that all the plumbers are
               | advanced degree holders, not just the engineer.
        
               | StavrosK wrote:
               | The limits are the shackles of oppression, the integral
               | is the proletariat and switching is disavowing capitalism
               | and seizing the means of production.
        
               | gmfawcett wrote:
               | I shall never look at calculus the same way again. :)
               | Thank you, comrade!
        
               | mst wrote:
               | That was completely unhelpful but also hilarious.
               | 
               | As such, a perfect russian joke.
        
               | StavrosK wrote:
               | Thank you, that's what I was going for!
        
               | zoom6628 wrote:
               | Brilliant !
        
             | the_gipsy wrote:
             | Caught me off-guard :D
        
           | MaxBarraclough wrote:
           | I'm reminded of a joke I heard from a talk by the philosopher
           | Dan Dennett:
           | 
           | A philosopher takes his friend to a magic show. After the
           | usual business of vanishing a few small mammals, the
           | magician's assistant lies in a magic box, and the magician,
           | with a dramatic flair, begins to saw through the box.
           | 
           | The philosopher's friend leans over and asks _What do you
           | think is really going on?_ The philosopher gives it a moment
           | 's thought and replies _They 're using illusionist skills to
           | give us the impression that he's sawing someone in two, but
           | really he isn't._ The philosopher's friend, unsatisfied, asks
           | _Right, but how?_ The philosopher shrugs dismissively, _That
           | 's really not my department._
        
             | NoOneNew wrote:
             | A. Good joke.
             | 
             | B. I hate how applicable this joke is to my life. Except
             | I'm the friend asking, then has to figure all the shit out
             | because all the people around me with degrees cant tell the
             | difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.
        
           | benibela wrote:
           | Could change it like that:
           | 
           | A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a
           | air balloon and are lost.
           | 
           | They encounter a man walking below:
           | 
           | The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?"
           | 
           | "..." the man looks up and says nothing
           | 
           | The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we
           | are!"
           | 
           | "..." after a while the man says: "yes".
           | 
           | The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a logician. The
           | others: "how do you know?"
           | 
           | "Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his
           | answer is logically correct. And lastly, his answer is
           | completely useless to us."
        
         | pretzelhands wrote:
         | Just for fun I checked where that position would be on world
         | map. Turns out it's in the Atlantic, quite a bit off the east
         | coast of the US.
        
         | mrmonkeyman wrote:
         | It is telling developers choose a methaphor in which they
         | position themselves at height, lowering themselves to establish
         | communication with any rabble they encounter.
         | 
         | (Arrogant? Moi?)
        
         | yeuxardents wrote:
         | I sent this to a project manager once, and they didnt
         | understand nor appreciate it.
        
           | ssss11 wrote:
           | I'm a project manager and find it hilarious! But i've also
           | been technical.
        
             | drno123 wrote:
             | So you are not "project manager", but "competent project
             | manager", which is something completely different :)
        
               | uncledave wrote:
               | I've never met one of them in the wild. A rare thing
               | indeed.
        
               | cornel_io wrote:
               | They're actually more common than engineers with
               | understanding of project management or the concerns that
               | they quite reasonably have. And they're way more valuable
               | than a zug-zug eng.
               | 
               | I say this as a pure engineer who has been a lead many
               | times but never a PM.
        
           | cantsingh wrote:
           | They must be a project manager.
        
             | faeyanpiraat wrote:
             | This is the comment that made me laugh, well done!
        
             | yeuxardents wrote:
             | I, perhaps appropriately, improperly calculated their
             | threshold for humor.
        
               | mkarliner wrote:
               | No, he did't deliver the joke fast enough.
        
               | oumua_don17 wrote:
               | And neither did he create a jira story for delivering the
               | joke in the sprint!!!
        
               | Cthulhu_ wrote:
               | Project managers wouldn't read the story anyway, they
               | cough up the headline and maybe a few lines of text and
               | expect the team to fill in the blanks during multiple
               | refinement meetings.
        
           | KrishMunot wrote:
           | I bet a product manager would be more kind
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | A similar joke I heard recently:
         | 
         | A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical
         | malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic
         | navigation and communications equipment.
         | 
         | Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the
         | helicopter's position and course to fly to the airport.
         | 
         | The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a
         | handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The
         | pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters.
         | 
         | People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft,
         | drew a large sign and held it in a building window.
         | 
         | Their sign read: "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."
         | 
         | The pilot smiled, waved, looked at her map, determined the
         | course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.
         | 
         | After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked the
         | pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine
         | their position.
         | 
         | The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the Microsoft
         | building because, the response they gave me was technically
         | correct, but completely useless."
        
           | bryanrasmussen wrote:
           | A helicopter was flying around above Seattle...malfunction
           | disabled... aircraft's electronic navigation and
           | communications equipment...
           | 
           | ....The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled,
           | drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's
           | window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters.
           | 
           | People in the tall building quickly responded to the
           | aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window.
           | 
           | The Sign was a stylized picture of the helicopter they were
           | in, with a BIG red arrow pointing towards the pilot's window
           | where a small cartoon pilot held up a sign saying 'WHERE AM
           | I" in a hand-rendered Helvetica font.
           | 
           | The pilot smiled...yadda yadda yadda..
           | 
           | After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked...
           | 
           | The Pilot responded "Tableau Software"
        
             | bryanrasmussen wrote:
             | I have to note that this pilot is always getting into
             | technical problems, and seems to know all the software
             | companies in Seattle and how they are likely to respond -
             | conclusion - the helicopter pilot is a project manager.
        
           | Netcob wrote:
           | Dave's Garage has some good stories!
        
             | codetrotter wrote:
             | That's where I heard it :)
        
           | robbrown451 wrote:
           | The joke above is a play on the older joke you told.
        
             | ehou wrote:
             | O the irony of down votes on a meta joke
        
               | jefurii wrote:
               | That's funny!
        
           | tppiotrowski wrote:
           | I believe the original form of this joke goes like this:
           | 
           | Lost man in a balloon yells down at a man on the ground
           | "Where am I?"
           | 
           | The man on the ground responds, "You're in a balloon"
           | 
           | The man in the balloon says "You must be a mathematician".
           | 
           | "Why?" asks the man on the ground.
           | 
           | "Because your answer is absolutely right and absolutely
           | useless"
        
           | tensility wrote:
           | This joke must have been written by a journalist who's never
           | been to Microsoft and doesn't bother to fact check their
           | work, since the Microsoft campus is in Redmond and the
           | tallest buildings there are only six stories high.
        
             | HeavyStorm wrote:
             | Thanks, that was annoying me.
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | You must be a programmer.
        
             | kevincox wrote:
             | Or they didn't think it mattered if the facts are correct
             | because it is a joke.
        
             | jchw wrote:
             | Well, I can at least tell for sure that I'm on Hacker News,
             | now. :)
        
               | mbrevda1 wrote:
               | That's technically correct, but ultimately useless,
               | information
        
               | kasztelan22 wrote:
               | All information is useless until it's useful
        
           | SilasX wrote:
           | But then that becomes a paradox because the fact that the
           | statement is useless makes it useful.
        
         | benjaminsuch wrote:
         | As much as I like the joke and of course understand the
         | analogy, I don't see how, from this conversation, the
         | programmer comes to the conclusion that he has to solve the
         | managers problem. The manager just asked, the programmer gave a
         | technical correct answer and the manager replied that it
         | doesn't help him. But at no point was the programmer expected
         | to solve the managers problem nor has he blamed him so that
         | it's "his fault".
        
           | wruza wrote:
           | I think it plays around a common case of a manager saving
           | their ass in front of superiors by shouldering the blame on
           | an unsuspicious employee ("what were you doing all these
           | months, what's the state of the project, and how are you
           | planning to deliver?"). With time the latter becomes
           | experienced enough to not take the blame, and detects these
           | attempts easily, because it is always happen to be "their"
           | fault.
           | 
           | (Sorry if that was obvious and you meant something else.)
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | PM gave a jerk response denigrating the programmers attempt
           | to help.
        
         | bryanrasmussen wrote:
         | A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost.
         | He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the
         | balloon further and shouts:
         | 
         | "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet
         | him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am.
         | 
         | The man below produces a small object the shape of a teardrop
         | colored a pleasing grayish blue that he proceeds to hold above
         | his head in an inverted manner and then with a courtly, elegant
         | bow indicates the ground the bottom of the teardrop is pointing
         | at.
         | 
         | The man in the balloon flies off again, exclaiming under his
         | breath "damn designers"
        
         | bryanrasmussen wrote:
         | It sounds like they're in the middle of the Atlantic? Have I
         | got it wrong, I must have because the programmer is supposed to
         | be standing in a field.
         | 
         | Wait - are they dead and in heaven!?!
        
           | he0001 wrote:
           | You must be a programmer. Those who actually checks the
           | requirements.
        
             | fuzzer37 wrote:
             | Sounds more like a pedantic QA
        
           | ant6n wrote:
           | Maybe a bug in a joke, perhaps the coordinates need fixing.
        
             | bryanrasmussen wrote:
             | This would never have happened if the joke had been made by
             | one of those 10X Comedians.
        
               | ralusek wrote:
               | I think without actually getting into the 10x debate
               | regarding engineers, we can all agree that there are
               | definitely 10x comedians.
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | Analogous to programming, the average joke-teller just
               | isn't that funny, making 10x more achievable.
               | 
               | "Think of a comedian." There probably isn't a 10x _that_
               | comedian for you.
               | 
               | "Find the first person to tell you a joke live next week;
               | considering them as a proxy for average, there is almost
               | surely a 10x comedian out there."
        
               | kcartlidge wrote:
               | - Milton Jones
               | 
               | - James Acaster
        
               | ralusek wrote:
               | Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman, Bert Kreischer - 1x
               | 
               | Tom Segura, Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Mark
               | Normand, Andrew Santino - 5x
               | 
               | Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Louis CK - 10x
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | Which was the _first_ comedian you named in response to
               | the question? Was it Kevin, Sarah, or Bert?
               | 
               | My hypothesis is there's a massive spread in performance
               | in comics, in programmers, and in most fields that are
               | substantially creative and when people argue "there is no
               | 10x <foo>" that it's more like because their reference
               | frame is higher than mine.
        
               | dagw wrote:
               | _There probably isn't a 10x that comedian for you._
               | 
               | To me the difference in 'funniness' between a random
               | standup special (even one that is 'good' enough to get a
               | distribution deal) and for example some of Eddie Izzard's
               | best is easily 1000x.
               | 
               | But of course my least favorite stand up special is also
               | literally the funniest thing someone else has ever seen.
               | So maybe it washed out in aggregate.
        
             | prepend wrote:
             | The programmer is messing with the PM.
        
               | bryanrasmussen wrote:
               | I think maybe the programmer has forgotten to replace the
               | mock data with a real data feed and he tells everyone who
               | asks the same incorrect latitude and longitude no matter
               | where they are.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | cstuder wrote:
         | "And you got there by a bunch of hot air."
        
       | verdverm wrote:
       | There are only two problems in programming...
       | 
       | Naming things, cache eviction, and off by one errors
        
         | harveynick wrote:
         | And feature creep.
        
         | keskadale wrote:
         | There are only two hard problems in computer science:
         | 
         | 0) Cache invalidation 1) Naming things 5) Asynchronous
         | callbacks 2) Off-by-one errors 3) Scope creep 6) Bounds
         | checking
        
       | andrewcarter wrote:
       | Why do Java developers wear glasses?... Because they don't C#
       | 
       | EDIT: Ah someone already did that one- what's a ghost's favorite
       | variable type? A BOOlean
        
         | cf100clunk wrote:
         | French programmers use boullion variables. Goldsmiths use
         | bullion variables.
        
       | royaltheartist wrote:
       | Did you know that Javascript programmers are giving up double
       | quote strings for Lint?
        
       | justsomeuser wrote:
       | What transpiler would a sheep use?
       | 
       | Baa-bel
        
       | luckystarr wrote:
       | There are only two hard problems in computer science:
       | 
       | * cache invalidation
       | 
       | * naming things
       | 
       | * off by 1 errors
        
       | tuan wrote:
       | You're my number 0
        
       | woutgaze wrote:
       | Yo mama's so fat, we had to set her column type to BLOB.
        
       | newscracker wrote:
       | Knock knock
       | 
       | Race condition
       | 
       | Who's there?
        
       | type_enthusiast wrote:
       | A C programmer and a C++ programmer walk into a bar.
       | 
       | A Haskell programmer describes how one would join them for a
       | drink.
        
       | jsjdjfjfjjrjfk wrote:
       | Why did the programmer swim in the crocodile river?
       | 
       | Warnings, but no errors.
        
       | laktak wrote:
       | My backslash escaped!
        
       | sacredcows wrote:
       | My favourite: "guys isn't it crazy how now we use on ehow we use
       | 'google ' as a word now? all the time back in my day we didn't do
       | that that's new"
        
       | epiddy wrote:
       | Don't recall the source, but it has stuck with me since my
       | assembler days...
       | 
       | There are only 10 types of people in this world. Those who
       | understand binary and those who don't.
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | 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...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | erik_seaberg wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | lwneal wrote:
       | It's often said that software engineers have no code of ethics.
       | This is untrue. For example, no respectable software engineer
       | would ever consent to writing a function called DestroyBaghdad().
       | 
       | Professional ethics would compel them to instead write a function
       | DestroyCity, to which "Baghdad" could be passed as a parameter.
       | 
       | https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Borenstein
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > 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.
        
           | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | _kst_ wrote:
             | Because passing the city by copy is way too expensive and
             | won't destroy the original city anyway.
        
               | ehnto wrote:
               | Depending on the language the ampersand could mean by
               | copy or by reference. I suspect the commentor wants by
               | reference, since they want to examine it later.
        
               | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
               | Your right; I meant by reference. I also said MISRA,
               | which implies destruction by means of Sea monster.
        
               | KMag wrote:
               | > Depending on the language the ampersand could mean by
               | copy or by reference
               | 
               | Yikes. Which languages use ampersand to signal passing by
               | value? That's a massive footgun if I'm ever cargo-culting
               | my way through writing some code in one of those
               | languages for the first time.
        
               | FroshKiller wrote:
               | Isn't the real footgun trying to do work you don't
               | adequately understand?
        
               | KMag wrote:
               | I generally learn a new language by cargo-culting my way
               | through a few small-ish programs. I wouldn't put anything
               | in production in a language that I didn't adequately
               | understand, but I could certainly waste a bunch of time
               | debugging if I got the meaning of & flipped.
        
               | simonh wrote:
               | Ok, here's a variation.
               | 
               | A programmer is drafted by the military and ordered to
               | write the software for a city destroying weapon. Given
               | the freedom to choose the implementation language, he
               | chooses Javascript. The user enters the city to be
               | destroyed, which is passed to the Function destroyCity().
               | 
               | The General returns from the weapon's fist use in battle
               | furious. "We fired your damn weapon at Bahgdad, and the
               | city's still there! What's going on?"
               | 
               | "I think I know" says the programmer. Javascript passes
               | it's parameters by value, not by reference."
        
       | dreen wrote:
       | Maybe not quite a joke supposedly this happened for real
       | 
       | A bunch of programmers/sysadmins are sitting in a bar, one of
       | them receives a phone call about some critical process on the
       | server which appears unresponsive. He troubleshoots for a few
       | seconds and then says "Well if its not cooperating just do a
       | kill"
       | 
       | At that point, from the next table, a big bald gentleman with a
       | huge golden chain and some missing teeth turns around, looks at
       | the guy on the phone and says "Respect!"
        
       | jmnicolas wrote:
       | Do you know what are black holes? It's where God divided by 0.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | _kst_ wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | andreygrehov wrote:
       | ====
       | 
       | "Assume we have 1000 apples, or let's take a round figure, 1024
       | apples."
       | 
       | ===                   // get tomorrows date         int
       | getTomorrowsDate() {             sleep(1000*60*60*24);
       | return getCurrentDate();         }
        
       | cf100clunk wrote:
       | The Lord said: "Go Forth and Multiply," but the Forth programmers
       | cried "Please, Lord, give us floating point!" (an oldie, because
       | for the longest time FORTH was only fixed point)
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | What's the difference between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg?
       | 
       | One's a human trying to conquer Mars and the other is an alien
       | trying to conquer Earth.
        
         | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
         | I don't know if I a downvote because Zuckerberg doesn't like
         | being called an alien or because Musk doesn't like being in the
         | same sentence as Zuckerberg! O.o
        
       | musicale wrote:
       | If automotive transportation had advanced as fast as computing
       | then cars would travel at the speed of sound, run completely on
       | solar power, and cost about 50 cents. And every day thousands of
       | them would drive to random locations and explode.
        
         | karmakaze wrote:
         | > And every day thousands of them would drive to random
         | locations and explode.
         | 
         | Bit close to the truth with v1.0 self-driving Level 3 or 4 and
         | denser battery tech.
        
       | mariodiana wrote:
       | Programming is like sex: make a mistake, and you just may end up
       | supporting it for the next 18 years.
        
         | scotty79 wrote:
         | Make anything.
        
       | athosblade wrote:
       | Not exactly jokes but I highly recommend looking up CommitStrip.
       | 
       | I think they're the only web comic dedicated to programmers
       | (excpet of course xkcd).
        
       | dandanua wrote:
       | Programmers solve tasks on their own branches due to our
       | ancestors -- apes.
        
       | preparat wrote:
       | I think I saw this on reddit years ago:
       | 
       | Programmer's wife: "when you go to the store, can you buy a
       | carton of milk and if they have eggs, get six."
       | 
       | He comes back with 6 cartons of milk. Wife: "why would you buy
       | six cartons of milk?"
       | 
       | "Well, they had eggs"
        
         | klik99 wrote:
         | I get it, she's upset that he didn't get 7, which is
         | technicallly what she meant.
        
         | nvader wrote:
         | The next time she says to him, "while you're at the store, pick
         | up some bananas."
         | 
         | Legend says he's at the store still.
        
           | musicale wrote:
           | Programmers will also use up all the shampoo if the label
           | says "lather, rinse, repeat" with no explicit termination
           | condition.
        
             | sjburt wrote:
             | Since when do programmers read the documentation?
        
             | dfex wrote:
             | Fortunately showering doesn't appear to be common in the
             | profession
        
             | mark-r wrote:
             | That one can be attributed to Grace Hopper.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | throwaway_dcnt wrote:
       | There are two hard problems in computer science: 1. Exactly once
       | message delivery, 2. Message ordering, 1. Exactly once message
       | delivery.
       | 
       | I would like to add to this, fuck you confluent with all your
       | lies that you sell to gullible idiots.
        
       | Yizahi wrote:
       | You were hired as a foreman on a construction of a laboratory on
       | the island. You arrive at the island and among unfinished
       | buildings you see - a giant ventilator the size of a building, an
       | air balloon ready to fly, and a room completely filled with a
       | floor mops. After some head scratching you remove all this junk
       | and complete the laboratory. But right after the scientists start
       | their work you hear an alert - "ALARM, TOXIC GAS LEAK DETECTED!".
       | 
       | - What is going on?! - you are crying, and call the previous
       | foreman.
       | 
       | - Hi Alex, we have a toxic gas leak in the lab, what can we do
       | now?
       | 
       | - Hmm, I dunno, did you change anything in the project?
       | 
       | - Well, I've thrown away floor mops...
       | 
       | - They were holding the ceiling.
       | 
       | - I'M SORRY WHAT? HOLDING WHAT AGAIN?!
       | 
       | - There are gas tanks on the floor above, very heavy, so I had to
       | to fill the room below with mops to hold them.
       | 
       | - You could have wrote some note, you know. What should I do now?
       | 
       | - Turn on ventilator, it will blow the gas away from the island.
       | 
       | - I've removed it a long time ago.
       | 
       | - Why?
       | 
       | - Why did you built 100 ton ventilator in the first place? You
       | could have just prepare a box of gas masks.
       | 
       | - I would have need to search for gas masks and ventilator was a
       | leftover from my previous project, so I've used it.
       | 
       | - Alex, we are suffocating here and there is no ventilator! We
       | need help!
       | 
       | - The fuck are you doing there then? Get on the air balloon and
       | fly away.
        
       | devchix wrote:
       | This is an old one.
       | 
       | What is a four-letter word name for a language that you write
       | once and run anywhere?
       | 
       | Perl.
        
       | colanderman wrote:
       | This is an amalgam of two half-remembered jokes, but I think it
       | works.
       | 
       | -------
       | 
       | An engineer, physicist, mathematician, and programmer are all
       | hired by a shepherd to create a pen to hold as many sheep as
       | possible with the materials given.
       | 
       | The engineer sets to work immediately building a traditional
       | rectangular fence: a proven design which works. She finishes in
       | an hour.
       | 
       | The physicist pulls out pencil and notepad, and after a few
       | minutes of computation, determines that a novel circular fence
       | design will enclose the maximum number of (spherical,
       | frictionless) sheep, while remaining structurally sound. He too
       | completes the fence within an hour.
       | 
       | The mathematician sits for an hour under a tree in deep thought,
       | suddenly jumps up, wraps herself in a short length of fence, and
       | says, "I declare myself to be outside the fence!" [this is
       | normally where the joke ends]
       | 
       | The programmer meanwhile is nowhere to be found, having run off
       | excitedly with his laptop immediately after hearing the problem
       | statement. The shepherd congratulates the other three on a job
       | well done, and they all part ways.
       | 
       | A week later, as the shepherd is tending to the flock, he is
       | surprised to see the programmer sitting in the shade of a tree,
       | furiously typing away at his laptop. "Uh, how's it coming?" the
       | shepherd asks.
       | 
       | The programmer replies, "It's going great! I've almost finished
       | coding the cross-platform terminal graphics library!"
        
         | vram22 wrote:
         | This was only the second joke I liked in this thread, reading
         | sequentially. First one was about the balloon.
        
       | paxswill wrote:
       | An SQL query walks up to a table and asks, "Can I join you?"
        
         | mleonhard wrote:
         | A NoSQL database runs into some friends at a restaurant. "Why
         | don't you join us?" "I would love to, but I can't join tables."
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | A russian, a french, and an irish archeologist are talking in a
       | bar
       | 
       | french: we found copper wire in our last dig, it shows france
       | invented networking
       | 
       | russian: we found glass strands in our last dig, it proves russia
       | invented fibre optics
       | 
       | irish: we found nothing. It proves the irish invented wireless
       | networks.
        
       | franze wrote:
       | When I am coding I often want to just shout out loud: THIS IS
       | SHIT! But honestly, I can never remember what this refers to.
        
       | charlesworth91 wrote:
       | Why do fish love programming in assembly? Because it's below C
       | level
        
       | willcipriano wrote:
       | Java is a DSL that turns XML into lengthy stack traces.
        
       | grahamburger wrote:
       | Not a joke, really, but a haiku:
       | 
       | It's not DNS
       | 
       | There's no way it's DNS
       | 
       | It was DNS
        
       | baritonehands wrote:
       | AFAIK this is an original:
       | 
       | Who's got 10 thumbs and only tells programming jokes? this.guy
        
       | pubby wrote:
       | Fortran joke: God is real, unless declared integer.
        
       | fuzzfactor wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | grumdan wrote:
       | How did the Three Wise Men find their way to baby Jesus? A Star.
       | (This joke works better when spoken out loud instead of written)
        
       | reidjs wrote:
       | What's a python programmers favorite type of poetry? Def poetry
       | 
       | What's the diff between a junior programmer and a senior
       | programmer? s/junior/senior. Also only the junior will laugh at
       | that joke.
        
       | evilotto wrote:
       | When all you have is a HammerFactoryImpl, every problem looks
       | like an INailIterator
        
       | 8114Y wrote:
       | Mechanical engineer walks around the field and thinks - there is
       | a field. Flowers grows on field. Bees are gathering honey from
       | flowers, doing good for flowers. Sun is shining over whole
       | ecosystem making everything grow. There must be an engineer, who
       | planned that. God exists! I believe in God!
       | 
       | Software engineers doesn't believes in God...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | johnthuss wrote:
       | There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand
       | binary and those who don't.
        
         | _kst_ wrote:
         | There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
         | 
         | Those who understand little-endian notation.
        
         | arthurcolle wrote:
         | The hex version is good too -
         | 
         | There are 16 types of people in the world: those who understand
         | hexadecimal and F the rest.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | sloaken wrote:
         | The real answer is:
         | 
         | Those who don't understand binary
         | 
         | Those that think its a binary joke
         | 
         | Those who understand trinary
         | 
         | no no it is:
         | 
         | Those who don't understand binary
         | 
         | Those that think its a binary joke
         | 
         | Those that think its a trinary joke
         | 
         | Those who understand base 4
         | 
         | ...
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | Sprite_tm wrote:
           | Those who don't understand binary, those that do, and those
           | who count in Gray codes.
        
           | lhorie wrote:
           | A human and a alien are talking about their number systems
           | 
           | Human: Oh, I see you use base 4. We use base 10.
           | 
           | Alien: WTF is base 4? We use base 10.
        
             | kaliara wrote:
             | Now this I like!
        
           | hpb42 wrote:
           | One can generalize this joke and use mathematical Induction
           | to tell infinite jokes.
        
       | carapace wrote:
       | "Computer science could be called the post-Turing decline in the
       | study of formal systems." (Dijkstra, I think.)
       | 
       | "Calling it Computer Science is like calling surgery 'knife
       | science'." (Also Dijkstra, I think.)
       | 
       | "Artificial Intelligence is when the machine wakes up and asks,
       | 'Hey, what's in it for me?'."
       | 
       | "There are two hard problems in computers: naming, cache
       | invalidation, and off-by-one errors." (Funny 'cause it's true.)
       | 
       | "Which will attain self-awareness first, Wolfram or Wolfram
       | Alpha?" (A little mean-spirited, perhaps, but funny. I respect
       | Dr. Wolfram, I suspect he's one of the people that, a thousand
       | years from now, folks will still be talking about when you and I
       | are long forgotten.)
        
       | massel wrote:
       | did you hear about the DSP engineer who remodeled the entryway in
       | her house overnight?
       | 
       | it was a fast foyer transform
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/caraesten/status/1284232296497770496
        
       | nzealand wrote:
       | 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?"
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | I'm a firefighter programmer and I liked this one.
        
           | Netcob wrote:
           | Well looks like you just leaked Boston Dynamics' next
           | product.
        
           | BerislavLopac wrote:
           | I thought all programmers are firefighters...
        
           | StavrosK wrote:
           | For a moment there I thought you were the other firefighter
           | programmer I know.
        
         | kaybe wrote:
         | I get hung up by the many reasons why playing at night would be
         | worse for them..
        
         | Moru wrote:
         | Haha, yes, that is so typical us programmers. We always know
         | best and ofcourse there is a simple solution that fixes
         | everything without even having to code a single line. But what
         | if they enjoy the feeling of the sun on the skin while golfing?
         | What if they are not completely blind but can see dark/light
         | shades? This makes it much easier to keep balance.
        
           | YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
           | ... what if they have to sleep in the same time as everyone
           | else?
        
           | vanderZwan wrote:
           | I think the joke is that we programmers don't consider such
           | implied requirements.
        
             | btschaegg wrote:
             | ...and, at times, lack empathy to a frightening extent ;-)
        
       | SmokyBourbon wrote:
       | PHP
        
       | TripleH wrote:
       | What kind of specialist does a broken iOS app consult?
       | 
       | An orthoplist.
       | 
       | NB: my coworkers gave me a weird look when I told them this
       | handmade nerdy joke, hope it will pull one or two smiles here
        
       | pulse7 wrote:
       | "Chuck Norris can instantiate an abstract class." :-)
        
       | a_bored_husky wrote:
       | "The plural of regex is regrets"
        
       | readflaggedcomm wrote:
       | I started writing one, but only finished 90%.
        
       | mesarvagya wrote:
       | How about following ?
       | 
       | #define true 0
       | 
       | #define false 1
        
       | 8114Y wrote:
       | The difference between God and Larry Ellison is that God doesn't
       | thinks that he is Larry Ellison.
        
       | speakeron wrote:
       | A programmer walks into a bar, or not.
        
       | dharmab wrote:
       | A QA engineer walks into a bar and orders a beer.
       | 
       | She orders 2 beers.
       | 
       | She orders 0 beers.
       | 
       | She orders -1 beers.
       | 
       | She orders a lizard.
       | 
       | She orders a NULLPTR.
       | 
       | She tries to leave without paying.
       | 
       | Satisfied, she declares the bar ready for business. The first
       | customer comes in an orders a beer. They finish their drink, and
       | then ask where the bathroom is.
       | 
       | The bar explodes.
        
         | kyriakos wrote:
         | This describes our qa team accurately
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | christophilus wrote:
         | This is the first one that made me laugh out loud. My kids came
         | over, "Can I see?" to which I replied "I'm a giant nerd."
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | senectus1 wrote:
         | Not a programmer, but this is good.
        
           | eyelidlessness wrote:
           | If you mean you're not a programmer, rad, good compliment. If
           | you mean QA engineers aren't programmers... wtaf?
        
             | spacemanmatt wrote:
             | It's weird how some people admit they still test code by
             | hand
        
               | imtringued wrote:
               | Automated test suites suffer from the same problem.
        
               | jtwaleson wrote:
               | It's very simple: you test things because we can't rely
               | 100% on developers to create the right thing or to create
               | it without any bugs. The same goes for automated test
               | software. I've personally created unit tests that were
               | failing for like 2 years but due to a bug still showed
               | green in CI.
               | 
               | To go back to the joke: manual QA is infinitely more
               | likely to find the exploding bathroom than a unit test
               | would ;)
               | 
               | Automated testing is a fantastic tool, but manual QA is
               | still very valuable.
        
               | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
               | It's weird how many bugs I regularly find in our software
               | by actually testing things by hand, as opposed to our QA
               | department, which does only automated testing and insists
               | they have covered 100% use-case scenarios.
        
               | eyelidlessness wrote:
               | I mean, I'm a programmer and I still test code manually.
               | I'm not sure why it has to be xor
        
               | Cthulhu_ wrote:
               | It's not an either/or though. Used to have an assignment
               | where we as developers would write automated tests
               | (regression tests), while we had an experienced software
               | tester with an excel sheet verifying things by hand. But
               | instead of just following the sheet - which is
               | automatable - he knew of a number of different techniques
               | and approaches and he'd still find a lot of issues that
               | nobody else found. For which we'd write a test to avoid
               | it happening again.
               | 
               | I mean I wouldn't have minded if they wrote more
               | automated tests themselves, but I'm also very aware that
               | the mindset of me and developers would quickly become
               | "it's not my responsibility to test my software".
        
               | detaro wrote:
               | QA is more than running tests by hand you could also just
               | code.
        
               | drdeadringer wrote:
               | > test code by hand
               | 
               | Personally, I find it helpful to bugger out things with
               | pen and paper before coding it out. This is helpful and
               | useful.
               | 
               | Greatness to you of you need not the analogue. Others
               | "below you" may and can do just as well. Please do not
               | down your nose upon such folks.
        
               | rkagerer wrote:
               | All my tests are individually hand-crafted from sapient
               | pearwood and proctored by a licensed pirate.
        
               | onionisafruit wrote:
               | If "by hand" you mean using your hands to type code that
               | generates tests, then yes, I admit to testing code by
               | hand.
        
               | worik wrote:
               | I do
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | "If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
       | themselves upon execution."
       | 
       | - Robert Sewell
        
       | easymodex wrote:
       | Yes, but I was too lazy to document it.
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | A programmer walks into a bar and ask for a drink. The bartender
       | says I'll give you a drink if you tell me a programmer joke. And
       | he says: a programmer walks into a bar and ask for a drink. The
       | bartender says I'll give you a drink if you tell me a programmer
       | joke. And he says: a programmer walks into a bar and ask for a
       | drink. So he gives the guy a drink, so he gives the guy a drink,
       | so he gives the guy a drink.
        
         | golergka wrote:
         | Finally, a recursion joke that is not about infinite recursion!
        
           | YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
           | Well, strictly speaking it is. There is no terminating
           | condition- the OP simply chose to return at an arbitrary
           | point in the recursion.
        
         | jeofken wrote:
         | This recurs until the programmers runs out of stacks
        
         | GurnBlandston wrote:
         | An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first
         | one orders a beer. The second one orders half a beer. The third
         | one orders a fourth of a beer. The bartender stops them, pours
         | two beers and says, "You guys should know your limits."
        
         | ashishmax31 wrote:
         | Now the programmer just waits till the stack blows up to get
         | his free drink.
        
           | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
           | Well, that depends on the language they speak.
        
           | yoz-y wrote:
           | That's how you get out of the simulation.
        
           | Gupie wrote:
           | Or whether the tale is optimised
        
         | hliyan wrote:
         | In a similar vein:
         | 
         | One day a student came to Moon and said: "I understand how to
         | make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count
         | of the pointers to each cons."
         | 
         | Moon patiently told the student the following story:
         | 
         | "One day a student came to Moon and said: 'I understand how to
         | make a better garbage collector...
        
           | rottc0dd wrote:
           | Disclaimer : Details nobody asked for.
           | 
           | These are one of the jokes originating from MIT AI Lab. And,
           | Moon mentioned here is David Moon - one of the famous hackers
           | from MIT AI lab.
           | 
           | Other such jokes from same origin [1]
           | 
           | [1] - http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/koans.html
        
         | jon_richards wrote:
         | I thought someone was going to raise a flag.
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | Recursive till you fall off your stool.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | i2shar wrote:
         | ... (continued): The bartender gives him a puzzled look and
         | says, "I didn't get it", to which the programmer responds "To
         | understand recursion you must first understand recursion."
        
           | kinard wrote:
           | https://www.google.com/search?q=recursion
        
             | pvitz wrote:
             | This is a wonderful easter egg, thanks!
        
               | combatentropy wrote:
               | Did you mean where it says "did you mean . . . "?
        
               | pvitz wrote:
               | Yes
        
           | vram22 wrote:
           | Google gets recursion:
           | 
           | https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/12/google-gets-
           | recursion.ht...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rsprinkle wrote:
       | How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
       | 
       | None. The light's on in here so it must be on there too.
        
       | linsomniac wrote:
       | God is real, unless declared integer.
       | 
       | In FORTRAN, by default, any variable name that starts with
       | I,J,K,L,M or N is an integer, otherwise it is a real type.
        
       | apengwin wrote:
       | Why do all Republicans have straight hair?
       | 
       | Because the curl of a conservative field is always zero.
        
       | Cockbrand wrote:
       | My personal favorite:
       | 
       | Knock knock. "Race condition." "Who's there?"
        
       | heidijavi wrote:
       | - SQL experience? + No experience. - Ok noted, NoSQL experience.
       | + ...
        
       | tilt_error wrote:
       | > got a light?       zsh: no matches found: light?
        
       | ximeng wrote:
       | From Twitter:
       | 
       | @steveklabnik * Jan 5 if a cow changes some state, you'd call
       | that a moo-table variable
        
       | AndrewOMartin wrote:
       | 1964 John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC.
       | 
       | 1974 Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
       | 
       | From A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming
       | Languages.
       | 
       | http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...
        
       | boojing wrote:
       | When coding, some programmers mix functional and imperative.
       | Others prefer not to: they believe in the separation of Church
       | and state.
        
       | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
       | How many Haskell developers does it take to change a lightbulb?
       | 
       | Maybe
        
       | ArchieMaclean wrote:
       | The GNU Humour [0] collection may be of interest. Also Dylan
       | Beattie has done some great songs on YouTube [1] (I especially
       | like 'Bug in the JavaScript' and 'You Give REST a Bad Name')
       | 
       | Here's a couple I remember from somewhere:
       | 
       | SEO expert walks into a bar...
       | 
       | ...tavern, pub, taproom, alcohol, beer, wine, vodka...
       | 
       | Also, tangentially related:
       | 
       | A farmer wants to section off part of his field with a fixed
       | length of fence. He is unsure what the best strategy is so he
       | unwisely calls the local university, who send an engineer, a
       | physicist and a mathematician.
       | 
       | The engineer makes a circle with the fence, declaring it to have
       | the greatest area for any given perimeter length.
       | 
       | The physicist makes a straight line as far as the eye can see in
       | either direction, and says that, to all intents and purposes, it
       | goes all the way around the world and he has fenced in half the
       | world.
       | 
       | The mathematician fences off a tiny one metre area around
       | himself, and says "I declare myself to be on the outside".
       | 
       | [0] https://www.gnu.org/fun/humor.en.html
       | 
       | [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/dylanhat
        
         | thunderbong wrote:
         | Man, those Dylan Beattie's videos are out of this world!! I
         | laughed way too hard on a number of them -
         | 
         | You give REST a bad name -
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSKp2StlS6s
         | 
         | We're Gonna Build a Framework -
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2h0cbvsw8
         | 
         | Enterprise Waterfall -
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq1MD5qXI08
        
       | znpy wrote:
       | This is an old-style joke: why programmers keep confusing
       | Christmas with Halloween? Because 25 Dec = 31 Oct.
        
         | Aachen wrote:
         | Haven't heard that one in a long time. Love it :)
         | 
         | Edit: but then like five more times down this thread... <insert
         | the fourteenth off-by-five joke>
        
         | krick wrote:
         | Wow. I never noticed.
        
       | cies wrote:
       | The two hardest things in computer science are:
       | 
       | 0. Naming things.
       | 
       | 1. Cache invalidation.
       | 
       | 2. Off-by-one errors.
       | 
       | (just found some attribution to: Leon Bambrick)
        
         | LeonB wrote:
         | ha, thank you. The numbers aren't needed though.
        
       | jdauriemma wrote:
       | Why was 6 afraid of base 7?
       | 
       | Because 10 11 12
        
       | n_f wrote:
       | Once upon a time, a baby bear asked his mama to tell him a story
       | about recursion. And so the mama bear started reading:
       | 
       | "Once upon a time, a baby bear asked his mama to tell him a story
       | about recursion, the mama bear started reading:
       | 
       | ...""
        
       | sotraw wrote:
       | #define private public
        
       | rvense wrote:
       | I went to a NodeJS party one time but I didn't like it, only one
       | person could have fun at once.
       | 
       | Then I went to an Erlang party, and it was just a bunch of nerds
       | at separate tables passing notes to each other about how much fun
       | they were having.
       | 
       | But the weirdest was the Haskell party. Nothing happened for six
       | hours and then suddenly everyone said "Well, that was fun!" and
       | went home...
        
         | jar3624 wrote:
         | funny stuff. got the Nodejs (single threaded) and Erlang
         | (message passing) jokes but not familiar with Haskell.. whats
         | joke there ...
        
           | pestaa wrote:
           | Lazy evaluation. Intermediate computations are stored as
           | "thunks" until the last possible moment.
        
           | culopatin wrote:
           | Is it batch perhaps? I'm pretty ignorant too.
        
       | teddyh wrote:
       | Programmers and computer scientists tend, in my experience, go
       | for what is sometimes called Ha-Ha-Only-Serious ("HHOS") type
       | jokes. Meaning, statements that are true, but so piercing that
       | they also are humorous.
       | 
       | In this vein, I can recommend the book _The Tao of Programming_
       | by Geoffrey James. There are also collections of funny anecdotes
       | like " _COMPUTER-RELATED HORROR STORIES, FOLKLORE, AND ANECDOTES_
       | "1, " _Computer Stupidities_ "2 and the pre-MacOS X Macintosh-
       | related collection of "folklore"3. There is also the classic "AI
       | koans" collection4.
       | 
       | If what you want is something more like a personal biography
       | (like the classic Feynman books), I can suggest _The Network
       | Revolution: Confessions of a Computer Scientist_ 5.
       | 
       | 1.
       | https://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/humor/Unix/computer.folkl...
       | 
       | 2. http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/
       | 
       | 3. https://www.folklore.org/
       | 
       | 4. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/koans.html
       | 
       | 5. https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC
        
         | albrewer wrote:
         | I would add "The Codeless Code"[1] to this list; very
         | entertaining stories/koans told as if programmers were monks in
         | a monastery.
         | 
         | [1] http://thecodelesscode.com
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | More like this:
           | 
           |  _Rootless Root -- The Unix Koans of Master Foo_ :
           | 
           | http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/
           | 
           |  _The Tao Of Backup_ :
           | 
           | http://www.taobackup.com/
           | 
           |  _Git Koans_
           | 
           | https://stevelosh.com/blog/2013/04/git-koans/
        
       | dmcgee wrote:
       | An old one:
       | 
       | Q: how many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a
       | lightbulb?
       | 
       | A: none they just change the standard to darkness.
        
       | plumsempy wrote:
       | my fav:
       | 
       | The bartender says: we don't serve race conditions here A thread
       | walks into a bar
        
       | ciaran-ifelse wrote:
       | I decided to solve a problem with regular expressions and now I
       | have two problems.
        
       | johnchristopher wrote:
       | C'est un administrateur systeme 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.
        
         | ojathe wrote:
         | 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 ?
        
           | johnchristopher wrote:
           | Yes, it's only funny when you play the dumb/silly guy and
           | people know "Paf le chien" (which is already absurd). French
           | people usually pronounce Path and Paf in the same way and
           | "Chemin" and "Chien" sounds alike.
           | 
           | What usually happens is the IT guys look at me, sighing and
           | non verbally confirm to non-IT people that the joke is way
           | too stupid and geeky to explain.
        
       | rsprinkle wrote:
       | How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
       | 
       | None. The light is working in here so it must be working there
       | too.
        
       | pryelluw wrote:
       | Horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks "Why the long face?"
       | Horse replied: I tried a short but didn't fit.
       | 
       | (Integer joke)
       | 
       | --
       | 
       | Can you milk a bool?
       | 
       | False.
        
       | jerzyt wrote:
       | Not exactly a joke, but it could be a marketing slogan for many
       | companies today: "AI or Die"
        
       | wwilim wrote:
       | Here's one I've heard, originally in Russian
       | 
       | ===
       | 
       | Why do programmers hate legacy projects, you ask?
       | 
       | Well, imagine yourself in a situation where you are asked to
       | finish the construction of a nuclear power plant on a remote
       | island that your friend started.
       | 
       | You arrive on the island to discover quite unusual pieces of
       | design in the project. Among other curiosities, you find a room
       | full of broomsticks, a 90 foot tall fan and a hot air balloon.
       | You think to yourself - what a silly idea, who needs all those
       | things in a power plant? - and your first steps are to remove all
       | those unnecessary dingbats.
       | 
       | A few months of hard work later, you have finished the
       | construction of the power plant. You and a few scientists gather
       | in the control room and power the thing up for the first time for
       | a test run. Everything seems to be working fine for a few
       | minutes, but suddenly, everything lights up red - there is a
       | radioactive gas leak!
       | 
       | You panic, because you have no idea what could have caused such
       | an issue. You call your friend and ask for ideas. While you
       | describe the situation to him, he is horrified.
       | 
       | - Have you really gotten rid of the room with the broomsticks?
       | 
       | - Of course! Why would you need a room full of broomsticks in a
       | power plant?
       | 
       | - They were holding up the weight of the reactor core! No wonder
       | you have a radioactive gas leak!
       | 
       | - My God, why did you not tell me? What should I do about the
       | leak?
       | 
       | - Don't worry, everything is fine, just turn on the 90 foot tall
       | fan and it should blow the toxic gas away from the island.
       | 
       | - What fan? Oh, this fan? I've gotten rid of it!
       | 
       | - Why would you do that?! It was an important safety measure!
       | 
       | - We'll argue about that later, people are dying in here! Is
       | there anything else I can do?
       | 
       | - You can't stay on the island, it is not safe. Just gather
       | everyone in the hot air balloon and get the hell out of there!
        
       | tilt_error wrote:
       | # cd /etc       # emacs hosts       # rm * ~       # ls       #
       | ls
        
       | nottorp wrote:
       | "They want a fixed price estimate" qualifies as a joke?
        
       | TedShiller wrote:
       | To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
        
       | genjipress wrote:
       | Why was there no popcorn at the next-gen OS conference?
       | 
       | Because nobody implemented the kernel!
        
         | rramadass wrote:
         | Groan!
        
       | gauravphoenix wrote:
       | Who is the ruler of devops?
       | 
       | Jenkins Khan.
        
       | galkk wrote:
       | This is long, but i love it
       | 
       | https://www.famicol.in/language_checklist.html
        
       | axelsvensson wrote:
       | If programming seems hard, it might be because you need to learn
       | a separate discipline depending on the order of magnitude of your
       | codebase LOC:
       | 
       | 100: Axiomatics
       | 
       | 101: Logic
       | 
       | 102: Mathematics
       | 
       | 103: Computer Science
       | 
       | 104: Software Engineering
       | 
       | 105: Group Psychology
       | 
       | 106: Politics
       | 
       | 107: Crisis Management
        
         | rramadass wrote:
         | Neat!
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | moneywoes wrote:
       | Good material for standup tomorrow, thank you all.
        
       | johnthuss wrote:
       | "I am Devloper" on twitter is amusing:
       | https://twitter.com/iamdevloper
        
         | jimbokun wrote:
         | https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/1346841020869324802
        
       | olegp wrote:
       | This is my programming version of another joke I heard:
       | 
       | A guy walks into a bar and sees a group of people. One of them
       | says a number and the rest laugh. Then the next person says a
       | number and everyone laughs again.
       | 
       | "What are you doing?" he asks them.
       | 
       | "We're telling each other jokes, but since we keep telling the
       | same ones, we've assigned each a number and rather than telling
       | the whole joke all over again, we can just reference it quickly
       | that way"
       | 
       | "Can I try?"
       | 
       | "Sure, go ahead"
       | 
       | "42", the guy says.
       | 
       | Everyone starts laughing and laughing and won't stop.
       | 
       | "What did I say?"
       | 
       | "Well you see, the joke you told us was:
       | 
       | A guy walks into a bar and sees a group of people. One of them
       | says a number and the rest laugh... etc. etc."
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | In the original joke the last answer was simply "We hadn't heard
       | that one before", but I'd like to think my recursive version has
       | more depth to it.
        
         | fuzzfactor wrote:
         | Another new guy walks in and finds this friendly group
         | explaining how they joke by number.
         | 
         | They encourage him to give it a try and he enthusiastically
         | says "18".
         | 
         | Nobody laughed at all.
         | 
         | Crickets.
         | 
         | He asks the guy next to him, "isn't 18 funny?"
         | 
         | "Yes, but you have to know how to tell a joke."
        
         | hutzlibu wrote:
         | Theres more depth in your one, but the original is more funny
         | and to the point.
        
         | onionisafruit wrote:
         | I remember my mother telling that joke to her friends at a
         | cocktail party in the 70s. I thought she was the funniest
         | person ever.
        
       | a_e_k wrote:
       | Q: Why did the multi-threaded chicken cross the road?
       | 
       | A: other side. get to the To
        
       | evphn wrote:
       | Why do front end engineers always have lunch alone? Because they
       | can't join tables.
        
       | voisin wrote:
       | /r/ProgrammerHumor is quite good.
        
       | pantelisk wrote:
       | Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll
       | use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
       | 
       | (quote from Jamie Zawinski)
        
       | infradig wrote:
       | Here's one from the olden days...
       | 
       | Q: How are programmers like card machines? A: With both you have
       | to punch the information in.
        
         | jjgreen wrote:
         | I heard a variant of this from musicians -- why is a drummer
         | like a drum machine ...
        
       | eitland wrote:
       | To err is human but to create utter chaos you will need a
       | computer.
       | 
       | (That said I really want to say something about JS, but I doubt
       | everyone here will appreciate it ;-)
        
       | wging wrote:
       | Yes.
       | 
       | (ok, this one's actually a logic joke...)
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | NortySpock wrote:
         | Ah, logic jokes...
         | 
         | Three philosophers walk into a bar, and the bartender asks: "Do
         | you all want a drink?"
         | 
         | The first one says "I don't know."
         | 
         | The second one says "I don't know."
         | 
         | The third one says "Yes!"
        
           | linux2647 wrote:
           | Ugh this is why I hated logic problems in school. Anyone care
           | to help a poor soul understand the meaning of this joke?
        
             | codetrotter wrote:
             | The bartender asked if all of them wanted a drink.
             | 
             | Logician number one does not know whether logicians number
             | two and three want a drink or not, so he can't say yes. If
             | he did not want a drink though, he could say no because
             | then it would not be true that they all wanted a drink. But
             | he wants a drink. Therefore he says he don't know, because
             | it will depend on whether the other two want drinks or not.
             | 
             | Same applies to logician number two. She is still missing
             | info about the third logician and therefore says she
             | doesn't know.
             | 
             | The third logician now knows that both of the other two
             | want drinks, and so can answer that all of them want
             | drinks.
        
             | th0114nd wrote:
             | It's a short circuiting conjunction. Consider
             | `aliceWantsADrink && bobWantsADrink`. If Alice doesn't want
             | a drink, she knows it's not the case that both of them want
             | a drink. Since she says "maybe" instead of "no" she signals
             | to Bob that she wants a drink, and so he concludes they
             | both want a drink.
        
             | wging wrote:
             | The question is "Do you all want a drink?" They're all
             | answering with the logical meaning of "all", where it's yes
             | if and only if every single one of them wants a drink, not
             | the common meaning. Their responses are the value of the
             | predicate `(A wants a drink) AND (B wants a drink) AND (C
             | wants a drink)`.
             | 
             | If either of the first two didn't want a drink, they would
             | be able to answer "no". They each started off knowing one
             | of the terms in that logical AND above. (They know their
             | own preferences are either "yes" and "no" but they aren't
             | yet aware of the others' preferences, and they each know
             | the others know that.)
             | 
             | For example, if (A wants a drink) is false, then the whole
             | predicate is false. So if A didn't want a drink, A would've
             | said "no". But instead they say "I don't know". They could
             | only have not known if they actually _do_ want a drink but
             | are unsure whether both of the others also do. But after
             | the first two people each say something that reveals they
             | do want a drink, the third person  "C" knows that:
             | 
             | 1. A wants a drink (or they would have said "no")
             | 
             | 2. B wants a drink (or they would have said "no")
             | 
             | 3. C wants a drink (knowledge of their own preferences)
             | 
             | and finally has enough information to conclude that the
             | overall predicate is true.
        
               | bondolo wrote:
               | There is also the ambiguous answer that first two give.
               | Is their response "I don't know" or is it "I don't, no".
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | erikerikson wrote:
             | Seriously?
             | 
             | The first hadn't heard from the others but wants a beer so
             | can't deny the universal.
             | 
             | The second hadn't heard the last but wants a beer so can't
             | deny the universal.
             | 
             | Neither the first or second could deny the universal so
             | therefore they want beer and so does the last so that one
             | can reply yes.
             | 
             | /Sigh, I explained it.
             | 
             | [Edit: and then noticed three others had already but I was
             | too incensed to read beyond the ask. /Sigh]
        
               | erikerikson wrote:
               | Yes, this was an inappropriate post that has no place
               | here. I'm sorry to the parent poster and anyone whose
               | enjoyment of the joke is blunted by this. I certainly
               | didn't intend to be an insulting downer but I certainly
               | don't expect anyone to read it as anything but intending
               | to insult. I apologise.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | I mean https://images.app.goo.gl/NHmXYwYPfN8MyiBL7
        
       | dharmab wrote:
       | I recommend The Codeless Code, a series of humorous programming-
       | themed Buddhist koans.
       | 
       | http://thecodelesscode.com/contents
        
         | smlckz wrote:
         | I actually read all of them. Why they stopped adding new ones?
         | Any similiar list of programming koans?
        
       | nvader wrote:
       | Yes
        
         | arthurcolle wrote:
         | 10/10
        
           | bfung wrote:
           | 1
        
             | Aachen wrote:
             | `whoami`
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | When going to sleep, programmer puts to the table next to his bed
       | a glass with water and an empty glass. The glass with water is in
       | case he'll want to drink at night and the empty glass is in case
       | he won't.
        
         | KMag wrote:
         | Funny, but I think even a lot of programmers won't realize it's
         | a joke about how eliminating special cases / branches from code
         | often makes the code look a little crazy at first glance.
        
         | rkagerer wrote:
         | The next morning he wakes up to find the first glass empty, the
         | other full of an amber tinted liquid, and a stranger in bed
         | with him.
         | 
         | "You must be the new consultant."
         | 
         | "How can you tell?"
         | 
         | "All we needed was a nappy, but instead you've bastardized the
         | system in ways it was never meant to be used, left a leaky
         | abstraction that doesn't flush the output, and now I've got to
         | clean up the mess ur in."
        
       | SilasX wrote:
       | My favorite, which I repeat a lot:
       | 
       | The reason God was able to finish the earth in only six days is
       | that He didn't have to worry about backward-compatibility.
        
       | amit9gupta wrote:
       | As virtual reality simulators assume larger roles in helicopter
       | combat training , programmers have gone to great lengths to
       | increase the realism of the their scenarios, including detailed
       | landscapes and -- in the case of the Northern Territory's
       | Operation Phoenix -- herds of kangaroos (since groups of
       | disturbed animals might well give away a helicopters position).
       | 
       | The head of the Defense Science and Technology Organization's
       | Land Operations/Simulations division reportedly instructed
       | developers to model the local marsupials' movements and reaction
       | to helicopters.
       | 
       | Being efficient programmers, they just re-appropriated some code
       | originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the
       | same stimuli, changed the mapped icon from a soldier to a
       | kangaroo, and increased the figures' speed of movement.
       | 
       | Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting
       | American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual
       | kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos
       | scattered, as predicted, and the Americans nodded appreciatively
       | . . . and then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from
       | behind a hill and launched a barrage of stinger missiles at the
       | hapless helicopter. (Apparently the programmers had forgotten the
       | remove "that" part of the infantry coding).
       | 
       | Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/shoot-me-kangaroo-down-
       | spo...
        
         | phs318u wrote:
         | Hahaha. Having worked at DSTO (many years ago) this is SO
         | believable.
        
       | yazmeya wrote:
       | Did you hear the one about a programmer losing all of her hair?
       | She bought a bottle of shampoo and the instructions said "Lather.
       | Rinse. Repeat."
        
       | dijksterhuis wrote:
       | A programmer's spouse asks them to purchase some items from the
       | supermarket:
       | 
       | "We've run out of milk, so buy a carton. Oh, and if they have
       | eggs buy six of them."
       | 
       | The programmer dutifully heads to the shop and returns with six
       | cartons of milk.
        
       | dandare wrote:
       | There are two types of people. Those who can extrapolate from
       | incomplete datasets.
        
       | hliyan wrote:
       | _Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine_
       | 
       | A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the
       | power off and on.
       | 
       | Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You
       | cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
       | understanding of what is going wrong."
       | 
       | Knight turned the machine off and on.
       | 
       | The machine worked.
       | 
       | Source: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/koans.html
        
       | gcristofol wrote:
       | How come God created the world in just 7 days? I wouldn't need to
       | be compatible with the previous version.
        
       | nathell wrote:
       | A biologist, a physicist, and a mathematician are all watching a
       | house that seems empty. Presently, two people enter the house,
       | and after a while three people come back out.
       | 
       | The biologist says: "Clearly, there was a breeding."
       | 
       | The physicist says: "Oh no, it's our measurements that are
       | imprecise."
       | 
       | The mathematician thinks for a while and declares: "If one more
       | person walks in, the house will be empty again."
        
       | pagade wrote:
       | I am surprised no one has posted this Stackoverflow link:
       | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-...
       | 
       | These are programming jokes 'in action'.
        
       | i2shar wrote:
       | A SQL query walks into a bar, approaches two tables and asks,
       | "May I join you?"
        
       | nielsole wrote:
       | A QA engineer walks into a new bar repeatedly, orders NaN beers,
       | -1 beers and 256 beers. Satisfied they let the first customer in.
       | The customer orders a beer. The bar explodes.
        
       | fsflover wrote:
       | There are only two hard problems in distributed systems:
       | 
       | 2. Exactly-once delivery
       | 
       | 1. Guaranteed order of messages
       | 
       | 2. Exactly-once delivery
        
         | valzam wrote:
         | Reminds me of
         | 
         | There are only 2 hard things about programming:
         | 
         | - Cache invalidation
         | 
         | - Naming things
         | 
         | - Off-by-one errors
        
           | skellystudios wrote:
           | Cache invalidation isn't hard, but it used to be and now we
           | can't get people to think otherwise.
        
             | rvense wrote:
             | I heard that the two main problems in computer science is
             | that we have only one joke and it's not very funny.
        
       | _kst_ wrote:
       | A mathematician, a physicist, an engineer, and a computer
       | scientists are all asked to test the hypothesis that all odd
       | numbers greater than 2 are prime. (Apologies in advance to
       | engineers.)
       | 
       | The mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is
       | composite. The hypothesis is false.
       | 
       | The physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is
       | composite, hmm, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is composite, 17 is
       | prime, 19 is prime. The hypothesis is true within the margin of
       | error.
       | 
       | The engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11
       | is prime, 13 is prime, 15 is prime, ...
       | 
       | The computer scientist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 5 is prime, 5 is
       | prime, 5 is prime, 5 is prime, ...
        
         | erik_seaberg wrote:
         | I heard a version that went
         | 
         | Mathematician: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, therefore
         | by induction we know all odd numbers are prime."
         | 
         | Physicist: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 must be
         | experimental error."
         | 
         | Computer scientist: "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is
         | prime ..."
        
       | yogrish wrote:
       | there are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand
       | binary and those who dont.
        
       | underseacables wrote:
       | 100 bugs in the code, 100 bugs in the code, take one down patch
       | it around, 141 bugs in the code.
        
       | kodah wrote:
       | What's the computational complexity of an average developer
       | workload on Linux?
       | 
       | O(Chrome)
        
       | asymptosis wrote:
       | Not precisely jokes, but the Unix Koans are both fun and
       | insightful: https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/
        
       | hiperlink wrote:
       | So this will sound like bitter, burnt-out comment and honestly
       | been there, did that... and now I'm bitter again due to recent
       | events at my recent workplace, but again this is just a pattern I
       | have recognized along the 25 years I've spent working on banking
       | software and later after the burn-out with a large telco.
       | 
       | So the programming joke:
       | 
       | The managers, especilally mid-level, and project owners.
        
       | colanderman wrote:
       | My favorite, from /usr/share/games/fortunes:
       | 
       | A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer
       | scientist are on a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving
       | along the savannah in their jeep, they stop and scout the horizon
       | with their binoculars.
       | 
       | The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white
       | zebra! Fantastic! We'll be famous!"
       | 
       | The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only
       | know there's one white zebra."
       | 
       | The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra,
       | which is white on one side."
       | 
       | The computer scientist: "Oh, no! A special case!"
        
       | detaro wrote:
       | just saw one on twitter I hadn't heard before:
       | https://twitter.com/ctrlshifti/status/1352103674030432257
       | 
       | developer: so i have good news and bad news
       | 
       | manager: what's the good news?
       | 
       | developer: i've discovered that the "5 second rule" only applies
       | to food
       | 
       | manager: and the bad news?
       | 
       | developer: i dropped our tables
        
       | wwarner wrote:
       | The OSI Model. Ha ha ha ha ha...
        
       | CalChris wrote:
       | In programming, as in life, a single missed period can be of
       | great significance.
        
       | motyar wrote:
       | true
        
       | iancmceachern wrote:
       | " Hardware eventually fails. Software eventually works" Michael
       | Hartung
        
       | cirgue wrote:
       | Someone else got downvoted to oblivion for this, though it
       | deserves to be higher because it's a classic: "I know a UDP joke,
       | but I'm not sure you'll get it".
        
         | hamilyon2 wrote:
         | ... or get it twice
        
         | eranation wrote:
         | Hi, I'd like to hear a TCP joke.
         | 
         | Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?
         | 
         | Yes, I'd like to hear a TCP joke.
         | 
         | OK, I'll tell you a TCP joke.
         | 
         | OK, I'll hear a TCP joke.
         | 
         | Are you ready to hear a TCP joke?
         | 
         | Yes, I am ready to hear a TCP joke.
         | 
         | OK, I'm about to send the TCP joke. It will last 10 seconds, it
         | has two characters, it does not have a setting, it ends with a
         | punchline.
         | 
         | OK, I'm ready to hear the TCP joke that will last 10 seconds,
         | has two characters, does not have a setting and will end with a
         | punchline.
         | 
         | I'm sorry, your connection has timed out... ...Hello, would you
         | like to hear a TCP joke?
        
           | type0 wrote:
           | "I would tell you a joke about UDP, but you probably wouldn't
           | get it."
        
         | type0 wrote:
         | Where is it? I didn't get it.
        
           | ALittleLight wrote:
           | UDP packets aren't guaranteed to be received - hence, "you
           | may not get it".
        
             | Rooster61 wrote:
             | And so the bartender ends up throwing the priest out along
             | with the packets!
        
             | type0 wrote:
             | Good, I know "I may not" but where is it then? This is no
             | joke, I'm very serious, my pointy-haired boss is mad and
             | said he needs the packets today /s
        
       | bigbluedots wrote:
       | I forget where this one came from.
       | 
       | How did the programmer die in the shower?
       | 
       | 'Lather, rinse, repeat'
        
       | _kst_ wrote:
       | At an SF convention party, someone said, "To be or not to be".
       | 
       | I replied "equals FF".
        
       | raphyjake wrote:
       | 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 very strict laws on how I can serve drinks. I couldn't
       | serve you half a beer even if I wanted to."
       | 
       | "But that's not a problem" mathematician #3 chimes in "at the end
       | of the joke you serve us a whole number of beers. You see, when
       | you take the sum of a continuously halving function-"
       | 
       | "I know how limits work" interjects the bartender.
       | 
       | "Oh, alright then. I didn't want to assume a bartender would be
       | familiar with such advanced mathematics".
       | 
       | "Are you kidding me?" The bartender replies, "you learn limits in
       | like, 9th grade! What kind of mathematician thinks limits are
       | advanced mathematics?"
       | 
       | "HE'S ON TO US" mathematician #1 screeches
       | 
       | Simultaneously, every mathematician opens their mouth and out
       | pours a cloud of multicolored mosquitoes. Each mathematician is
       | bellowing insects of a different shade.
       | 
       | The mosquitoes form into a singular, polychromatic swarm. "FOOLS"
       | it booms in unison, "I WILL INFECT EVERY BEING ON THIS PATHETIC
       | PLANET WITH MALARIA"
       | 
       | The bartender stands fearless against the technicolor hoard. "But
       | wait" he inturrupts, thinking fast, "if you do that, politicians
       | will use the catastrophe as an excuse to implement free
       | healthcare. Think of how much that will hurt the taxpayers!"
       | 
       | The mosquitoes fall silent for a brief moment. "My God, you're
       | right. We didn't think about the economy! Very well, we will not
       | attack this dimension. FOR THE TAXPAYERS!" and with that, they
       | vanish.
       | 
       | A nearby barfly stumbles over to the bartender. "How did you know
       | that that would work?"
       | 
       | "It's simple really" the bartender says. "I saw that the vectors
       | formed a gradient, and therefore must be conservative."
        
         | froh wrote:
         | So the _programmers_ joke here is the silent nod to jamie
         | zawinski, as a maths savvy guy who is bartending?
         | 
         | https://www.jwz.org/about.html
        
           | mkl wrote:
           | Don't click this link, copy and paste it. JWZ redirects
           | clicks from HN.
        
             | Grebbles wrote:
             | How exactly does a redirect like that work? I didn't know
             | links provided context when loading the subsequent page.
        
               | ayewo wrote:
               | The web server was configured to check the referrer.
               | If (referrer === 'https://news.ycombinator.com') {
               | // show offensive pic of male genitalia         }
        
             | kroltan wrote:
             | Or click it too! It's pretty hilarious
        
         | CGamesPlay wrote:
         | I feel like this is every corny maths joke all rolled into one.
         | Very creative.
        
         | barakados wrote:
         | 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]
        
           | 0-_-0 wrote:
           | Joke piracy is rampant these days...
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | raphyjake wrote:
           | I had no idea where this was from. Sadly the guy who sent it
           | to me didn't tell me the joke was under copyright
        
           | Judgmentality wrote:
           | > Hey, it's not cool to steal jokes from /r/antiantijokes.
           | 
           | When is it okay to repeat a joke from the internet and when
           | is it not?
        
             | edoceo wrote:
             | Always and Never, at the same time.
        
           | some_random wrote:
           | so many poor poor redditors are going to have trouble feeding
           | their children because of this tragic joke piracy ;(
        
           | kchr wrote:
           | Are you saying you've never told a joke without knowing (or
           | mentioning) the source...?
        
         | bigdict wrote:
         | I want to hear Norm Macdonald tell this joke.
        
         | ulucs wrote:
         | An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar, where a
         | beer costs 3$.
         | 
         | The first mathematician orders a beer.
         | 
         | The second mathematician orders two beers.
         | 
         | The third mathematician orders three beers.
         | 
         | "Oh, I see where this is going" says the bartender and pays a
         | quarter to the first mathematician. "This should cover your
         | check, then."
        
           | paraknight wrote:
           | Can you explain?
        
             | 9000 wrote:
             | It's referencing a theorem from string theory, as discussed
             | in this Numberphile video:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww
             | 
             | The catch is that this isn't valid in what we consider
             | standard mathematics, and you can find many discussions of
             | this online, but this one is fairly short and
             | straightforward:
             | http://curiouscheetah.com/BlogMath/infinity-and-string-
             | theor...
        
             | dmlerner wrote:
             | 1 + 2 + 3 + ... = -1/12 total beers
             | 
             | -1/12 beers * $3 / beer = -$0.25
             | 
             | negative -> pay them for taking the beer
             | 
             | The -1/12 result is pretty widely known, but not
             | particularly true. It's called "analytic continuation."
             | There's a nonrigorous proof that's accessible at a
             | highschool level - see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
             | /1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B...)
             | 
             | Delightfully, this comes up in string theory, in computing
             | the dimensionality of spacetime.
        
             | duffmancd wrote:
             | The sum of all positive integers can be somewhat described
             | as negative one twelfth:
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-d9mgo8FGk
        
           | smolder wrote:
           | Is this an antijoke or did I just need to know where it's
           | going, like the bartender? Maybe the bartender is confused?
        
             | evanb wrote:
             | This joke relies on the listener knowing that the
             | regularized sum of 1+2+3+... = -1/12.
        
               | enriquto wrote:
               | That's what makes it funny!
        
             | Thorondor wrote:
             | The joke is that the Ramanujan sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ...
             | is equal to -1/12, so the check should be $3 * -1/12 =
             | minus one quarter. [0]
             | 
             | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_
             | %E2%8B...
        
               | smolder wrote:
               | Thanks, that's a bit of math trivia I either forgot or
               | never learned.
        
         | whoisburbansky wrote:
         | 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 her that in a few
         | minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over
         | and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x
         | cubed.
         | 
         | She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"?
         | 
         | He repeats "one third x cubed".
         | 
         | She says, "one thir dex cuebd"?
         | 
         | Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off
         | mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".
         | 
         | The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove
         | his point, that most people do know something about basic math.
         | He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the
         | first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress
         | and asks "what is the integral of x squared?".
         | 
         | The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking away,
         | turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a constant!"
        
           | StavrosK wrote:
           | I don't get it :( Did she know the answer? Then why the
           | confusion at the start?
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | OJFord wrote:
             | Yeah that does push it a bit, but the joke is that she
             | didn't understand what he was talking about with the
             | 'onethirdxcubed', mis-parsing it without context. But when
             | asked the integral, she knew the answer; not because she'd
             | been told.
        
               | vram22 wrote:
               | Then it could also almost be a joke about parsing and
               | context-free grammars or such.
        
               | StavrosK wrote:
               | Ahh, thank you, that makes sense.
        
               | randcraw wrote:
               | The version of the joke I'd heard doesn't include the
               | waitress' attempt to meaninglessly memorize the answer.
               | She simply nods when initially tutored, then later
               | surprises both mathematicians that "an average person"
               | knows how to properly solve an integration problem
               | without any help.
        
               | StavrosK wrote:
               | I think that's a better version/telling.
        
           | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
           | > 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.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | OJFord wrote:
             | Did you stop reading then? Because the actual joke is that
             | even the guy that thought the average person numerate
             | stereotyped her as dumb and was wrong.
             | 
             | An absurd example of a 'blonde joke' to object to if you're
             | going to.
        
               | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
               | That's my very point: there are people who will find it
               | offensive neverheless.
        
             | littlestymaar wrote:
             | You didn't understand the joke did you?
        
             | selestify wrote:
             | Agreed. Although it should be fine if you know your
             | audience and redact only as needed.
        
             | polytely wrote:
             | Seems very unlikely? This joke is obviously punching up
             | instead of punching down. Feel like a lot of people worried
             | about cancel culture have some kind of bogeyman in their
             | head that doesn't reflect reality at all.
             | 
             | Even if that wasn't the case: the niche nature of the joke
             | protects you against global outrage
        
               | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
               | I wish it was a bogeyman. The Donglegate happened because
               | someone _overheard_ a joke between two friends. Then
               | people have been fired. I 'm very, very careful about
               | every joke I tell and who is around.
        
             | yholio wrote:
             | Well, the joke is a play on those gender stereotypes, the
             | blonde waitress clearly knows much more then even the
             | optimistic mathematician expects. The butt of the joke here
             | is the university system and the jobs market.
        
               | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
               | That's true, but frankly, would you tell this joke during
               | a conference? Personally, I'd prefer not to, even if it
               | was relevant.
        
             | frabert wrote:
             | The joke is an explicit rejection of that particular trope,
             | though.
        
               | wruza wrote:
               | I think the idea is that the one who would feel offended
               | by this joke, could also only see the trope and not the
               | fact it was rejected. And if you dare to explain it, you
               | automagically end up in a deadlock.
               | 
               | It also unlocks the tactic "I will play dumb for a while
               | so you don't feel too smart anymore". If you want to
               | continue to do good, don't open up for stupid attacks --
               | politics 101.
        
         | mkl wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | johnchristopher wrote:
         | Ohoooo, that was a nice one !
        
         | elwell wrote:
         | > and with that, they vanish.
         | 
         | I feel like that was the most hilarious part, and the joke
         | could have ended there as like an anti-joke of sorts. I like
         | how crazy it got with the "FOOLS" part. Unexpected...
        
         | athriren wrote:
         | this has levels.
        
         | refulgentis wrote:
         | 90% through I reached for the flag button, 2 seconds later, I'm
         | weeping. Thank you
        
       | MrPatan wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | forgotmypw17 wrote:
         | But what about cache invalidation?
        
         | marcus_holmes wrote:
         | I like to think it's more insightful with the joke, because
         | there's always some problem that you weren't expecting.
        
         | yread wrote:
         | ...er you forgot the off-by-one errors!
        
       | cypherpunks01 wrote:
       | What did the girl function say to the boy function?
       | 
       | I just don't see this recursion going anywhere, we keep having
       | the same arguments. Please don't call me anymore.
        
       | TheRealDevonMcC wrote:
       | A programmer, an engineer, and a physicist are in adjacent hotel
       | rooms. Each has a pitcher of water beside the bed. A fire starts
       | in the wastepaper basket in each room.
       | 
       | The physicist wakes up, sees the fire, estimates exactly how much
       | water is needed to put it out, and pours exactly that amount from
       | the pitcher, dousing the flames.
       | 
       | The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, pours the entire pitcher of
       | water on it, then refills the pitcher and douses it again to be
       | safe.
       | 
       | The programmer wakes up, sees the fire, sees the pitcher of
       | water, decides it's a solvable problem, and goes back to sleep.
        
         | StavrosK wrote:
         | I know it with "The mathematician's bin was full, so he lit it
         | on fire, reducing the problem to one with a known solution".
        
         | beervirus wrote:
         | Makes more sense with a mathematician than a programmer.
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | The programmer looks online for documentation on how to use
           | the water, finds it too complicated, dumps the water out the
           | window, then dumps the contents of the wastebasket out after
           | it. Seeing the fire gone the programmer later goes on to give
           | a conference talk about the importance of a good throwing arm
           | in fire safety.
        
             | el_benhameen wrote:
             | I chuckled at the original, but yours really got me. I feel
             | seen.
        
         | vharuck wrote:
         | Variant I heard, had a physicist, engineer, and mathematician
         | sharing a room.
         | 
         | The first two wastepaper basket fires were taken care of the
         | same ways by the physicist and engineer.
         | 
         | Then a third fire appears, but on the curtains. The
         | mathematician says he'll take care of it, so the others go back
         | to sleep. The mathematician removes the curtains, puts them in
         | the wastepaper basket, and says, "Now it's a solved problem."
         | He then goes back to sleep.
        
       | timdiller wrote:
       | The programmer sets two cups on his nightstand, one full of water
       | in case he gets thirsty, the other empty, in case he doesn't.
        
       | maerF0x0 wrote:
       | This is not exactly a joke, but these seem relatively on topic as
       | humor:
       | 
       | Monzy - Kill Dash Nine
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4
       | 
       | Googlers - Write in go
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJvEIjRBSDA
        
       | mr-wendel wrote:
       | Jesus and Satan are having a programming contest to decide who
       | gets to be God's right-hand man.
       | 
       | The time limit is one day to create an Earth simulator. They
       | begin, and both furiously code away without taking any breaks.
       | Near the end of the day, there is a power outage and their
       | computers are shut off.
       | 
       | Power is quickly restored. Satan is aghast! "I lost all my work",
       | he exclaims.
       | 
       | Jesus just smiles, types few commands, and continues coding where
       | he left off... because everyone knows: Jesus saves.
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | A doctor, an architect and a programmer talk about their
       | professions. "Mine is the oldest", says the doctor, "as everybody
       | knows God created Eve from the rib of Adam, and that's definitely
       | a medical operation". "Right", says the architect, "but in fact
       | architect is even older - it's definitely an architectural
       | project to create the world from chaos". At this point programmer
       | kicks back in the chair and gives friends a mysterious look.
       | "Who, do you think, created the chaos?"
        
         | jcstauffer wrote:
         | As others mentioned, I've also heard this as a lawyer taking
         | claim from the chaos.
         | 
         | I also heard this from a friend that heard it from Ronald
         | Reagan, who claimed it was his favorite joke.
        
         | bigdict wrote:
         | You win this thread. All high quality jokes.
        
           | avmich wrote:
           | All not mine, and definitely old - but we're a big bunch,
           | there are lots of programmers, and not everybody heard them
           | :) .
        
         | stevage wrote:
         | I always heard this with a lawyer at the end.
        
           | DoofusOfDeath wrote:
           | The joke's context is Genesis chapters 1-2, so it wouldn't
           | make sense to include a lawyer. Satan only shows up in
           | chapter 3.
        
       | Sebb767 wrote:
       | Read that one a long time ago:
       | 
       | Each program has at least one big. Also, a program can always be
       | shortened by a line. Therefore, every program can be shortened to
       | a single line that doesn't work.
       | 
       | Also:
       | 
       | Why do Java programmers wear glasses?
       | 
       | Because they can't C# ;)
        
       | ThrustVectoring wrote:
       | 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."
        
         | austinl wrote:
         | 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".
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | obligatory reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/inclusiveor
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | That's... not another variant of that joke?
        
             | rnotaro wrote:
             | One is about "Or" statements and the other is about "And"
             | statements.
             | 
             | All three logisticians needs to be "true/yes" and the first
             | one didn't know about the two others so the logistician
             | says "I don't know". If he didn't wanted dessert, he would
             | have said "no".
             | 
             | Same thing for the second logistician.
             | 
             | The last logistician was able to say "yes, we would."
             | because none of the other logistician said "no". Therefore,
             | they all wanted dessert.
        
           | ReptileMan wrote:
           | They ask Lemmy Kilminster whether he likes more beer or
           | women. He answers yes.
        
             | YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
             | No - " _hell_ yes ". In fact, "Hell _yeah_ ".
             | 
             | It's Lemmy Kilminster, right?
        
           | BerislavLopac wrote:
           | 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...
        
         | mrec wrote:
         | "Logician". A logistician is someone who deals with logistics.
        
           | onionisafruit wrote:
           | No. A logician is a lounge act that saws a log in half.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | dhagz wrote:
             | That's a boring act.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Nice this is my favourite so far!
        
           | tandr wrote:
           | Would you be kind and explain this joke please?
        
             | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
             | First of all, the joke makes no sense if you put a
             | logistician instead of logician. Second, if you ask one
             | person a question related to the opinions of all others,
             | logically they can't answer yes or no, the only possible
             | answer is "I don't know." Only when you reach the last
             | person you have a chance of giving a definite answer.
             | 
             | Note the first logicians have to answer "I don't know" even
             | if they don't wan't it, otherwise their statement becomes
             | untrue.
        
               | rimliu wrote:
               | > Note the first logicians have to answer "I don't know"
               | > even if they don't wan't it, otherwise their statement
               | > becomes untrue.
               | 
               | No. "A && B && C" is only true when all three are true.
               | If A knows it does not want, they can answer "no",
               | because there is no way "ALL want" is true in that case.
        
               | dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
               | Correct. I missed "all" in the joke.
        
             | spost wrote:
             | The waitress asked if they would ALL like dessert. If the
             | first logician did NOT want dessert, then they could safely
             | answer "no", because then it would not be the case that ALL
             | of the logicians want dessert. Since they do not answer no,
             | we can assume they do want dessert. The same follows for
             | the second logician. The third (who also wants dessert) has
             | heard their colleagues answer, and knows that if either of
             | them did not want dessert they would have answered no, and
             | can therefore now answer "yes, we would all like dessert".
        
               | tandr wrote:
               | thank you!
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | billpg wrote:
         | The first two logisticians, each being a flawed human capable
         | of error, might have answered "I don't know" despite not
         | wanting dessert.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | vulcan01 wrote:
         | Forgive me for my ignorance, but I don't really understand this
         | joke...
         | 
         | Is it something to do with the first 2 not knowing the
         | preference of the others?
         | 
         | EDIT: never mind, this was also posted later in the thread and
         | there's an explanation there.
        
           | hirundo wrote:
           | If either of them didn't want dessert they would know that
           | not all of them wanted dessert.
        
           | haihaibye wrote:
           | Yes. If they personally didn't want it, they'd say "no". As
           | they're uncertain about the others, they say they don't know.
           | 
           | Then the final person knows the others all want yes, and
           | personally wants yes, so says yes.
           | 
           | It's like lazy evaluation of booleans in if statements.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | krapp wrote:
       | I don't have the joke, only the lame punch-line:
       | 
       | "Compiler? I don't even _know_ her! "
       | 
       | Badum bum.
        
         | pjm331 wrote:
         | Part of a long proud lineage of terrible jokes. When asked for
         | a tissue my dad would always say: "tissue? I barely know you!"
        
       | dunreith wrote:
       | A SQL developer walks into a bar. He walks to two tables in the
       | back and asks, "mind if I join you?"
        
       | yccs27 wrote:
       | /* No comment */
        
       | 0atman wrote:
       | There are only two hard problems in computer science:
       | 
       | 2. Correct-ordering of messages
       | 
       | 1. Exact-once delivery
       | 
       | 2. Correct ordering of messages
       | 
       | This is my favourite variation of the form documented by Fowler
       | here https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html
        
       | penguin_booze wrote:
       | What's a Microsoft Product that doesn't suck?
       | 
       | Their vacuum cleaner!
        
       | pb82 wrote:
       | There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who
       | understand binary and those who don't.
        
       | gmiller123456 wrote:
       | I was going to post a joke about UDP, but I don't know if you'd
       | get it.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dharmatech wrote:
       | What did the error-correcting RAM say to the buggy Pentium chip?
       | 
       | BOOLSHIT!
        
       | lostlogin wrote:
       | A physicist, an engineer and a programmer were in a car driving
       | over a steep alpine pass when the brakes failed. The car was
       | getting faster and faster, they were struggling to get round the
       | corners and once or twice only the feeble crash barrier saved
       | them from crashing down the side of the mountain. They were sure
       | they were all going to die, when suddenly they spotted an escape
       | lane. They pulled into the escape lane, and came safely to a
       | halt. The physicist said "We need to model the friction in the
       | brake pads and the resultant temperature rise, see if we can work
       | out why they failed". The engineer said "I think I've got a few
       | spanners in the back. I'll take a look and see if I can work out
       | what's wrong". The programmer said "Why don't we get going again
       | and see if it's reproducible?"
       | 
       | Slightly over analysed thread at:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2wf5ge/a_mechanical_...
        
         | brobdingnagians wrote:
         | Love this one. I've heard a variant where the programmer
         | suggests pushing it back up the mountain to reproduce it.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | patal wrote:
       | The Steve Yegge article: "Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns"
       | serves basically as a Java joke story.
       | 
       | http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom...
        
       | mfkp wrote:
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/programmerhumor
       | 
       | (Sort by top for some good ones)
        
       | jaredwiener wrote:
       | Knock knock.
       | 
       | Who's th--
       | 
       | RACE CONDITION.
        
       | anonymou2 wrote:
       | A computer programmer is found dead in the shower. Next to him
       | there is a bottle of shampoo, with the instructions: Apply,
       | rinse, repeat.
        
       | gok wrote:
       | 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"
        
         | twic wrote:
         | 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?
        
           | adrianmonk wrote:
           | Yes. Try a 7-up or Sprite with lime sherbet.
        
           | code_duck wrote:
           | Coke floats, yes. Haven't encountered 7-up.
        
         | HPsquared wrote:
         | Root beer should be a float regardless, in case beer isn't a
         | perfect square.
        
       | jasoneckert wrote:
       | Which US state should any foreign developer visit first?
       | 
       | Maine.
        
       | cm2187 wrote:
       | Self-confidence, as a programmer, is when starting a new project,
       | storing the transaction ID in an int64 rather than an int32.
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | RT @HackerNewsOnion: California has ruled it illegal to conceal a
       | company's JIRA subscription for the purpose of attracting
       | engineers.
        
       | chrisbennet wrote:
       | Security is "S" in IOT.
        
         | avmich wrote:
         | Remember that "S" in "IoT" stands for "Security".
        
       | m463 wrote:
       | Here is a list by hash (or crc or broken link, or <correct-
       | analogy-here>)
       | 
       | ... Everybody knows "Jesus saves."
       | 
       | ... Someone who makes you an offer you can't understand
       | 
       | ... It just needs a good text editor.
       | 
       | ... Because Oct 31 = Dec 25
       | 
       | ... All they do is sit on the bed and tell their spouses how good
       | it's going to be.
       | 
       | ... They haven't had any gigs yet.
       | 
       | ... "Please excuse my friend, he's not null terminated."
       | 
       | ... Profanity.
       | 
       | ... At which point the genie responds, "Uh, let me see that map
       | again."
       | 
       | ... None. They just declare darkness the standard.
       | 
       | ... The programmer says "Let's just get out and get back in
       | again."
        
       | closeparen wrote:
       | A Markov chain trained on CS textbooks and the Bible.
       | 
       | https://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com/
        
         | markvdb wrote:
         | 5:5 And, behold, I will deliver you up to the programmer
         | tendency to build overelaborate castles of abstractions.
        
         | alexeldeib wrote:
         | thoroughly enjoyed https://thedoomthatcametopuppet.tumblr.com/
         | linked from that page, same idea (same person?)
        
         | archi42 wrote:
         | Working on the lower levels, I have to wholeheartedly agree:
         | 
         | > Depart ye; it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the place of
         | Tophet, because of all the machine registers
        
         | plekter wrote:
         | Some of these are pure gold!
         | 
         | "2:4 And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and
         | more like a controlled use of shared memory."
        
         | kodah wrote:
         | > 25:34 But the field of computer science and AI research. All
         | attracted bright people who contributed great things to the
         | church
         | 
         | The Church of Skynet demands sacrifice
        
       | throw-away_42 wrote:
       | A masterpiece of programming comedy:
       | https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | "A full-stack developer is one who can add technical debt to any
       | layer of the application."
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | Boy: dad, what will be "two by two equals four"? Programmer:
       | true, my son.
        
       | _threads wrote:
       | My favorite one : how many devs does it take to change a bulb ?
       | 
       | They can't, it's an hardware issue
        
       | grumdan wrote:
       | Programming-related humor is pretty tricky. I once told a UDP
       | joke, but nobody got it..
        
       | pickle-wizard wrote:
       | A woman texts her husband "While you're at the store, buy eggs"
       | 
       | To this day he is still buying eggs.
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | RT @iamdevloper: I think I've had milk last longer than some
       | JavaScript frameworks.
        
       | cantsingh wrote:
       | Not strictly programming, but:
       | 
       | An SEO consultant walks into a bar, pub, speakeasy, drinking
       | hall, club.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | I don't follow...
        
           | JimWestergren wrote:
           | Remove the link condom.
        
           | a_e_k wrote:
           | Spamming keywords
        
       | sbierwagen wrote:
       | Why do programmers always confuse Halloween and Christmas?
       | Because OCT 31 = DEC 25
        
       | pupdogg wrote:
       | A friend of mine is in a band called 1023MB. They haven't had a
       | gig yet.
        
         | elwell wrote:
         | That bites, it doesn't make sense in a bit.
        
       | helph67 wrote:
       | Definition of Recursion:- see Recursion
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | Loop, Infinite: see Infinite Loop
         | 
         | Infinite Loop: see Loop, Infinite
        
         | Silhouette wrote:
         | recursion, n. See _tail recursion_.
         | 
         | tail recursion, n. See _tail recursion_.
        
       | billfruit wrote:
       | Not exactly a programmer joke:
       | 
       | Airport security caught a statistician try to sneak in a bomb in
       | his baggage. The aprehened him and question him why he has a bomb
       | with him:
       | 
       | "I calculated the probability that a flight will carry two bombs
       | on board, and it is never likely to happen, so I brought one
       | along."
        
       | AGivant wrote:
       | Why programmers mistake Halloween with Christmas? Because Oct 31=
       | Dec 25
        
       | _rohan wrote:
       | Q: If Spider-Man and Wonder Woman founded a company, what would
       | it be? A: Amazon Web Services
        
         | zem wrote:
         | older joke along the same lines: what do you get if you cross
         | lee iacocca and dracula?
         | 
         | autoexec.bat!
        
         | rramadass wrote:
         | Ha, ha!
        
       | BerislavLopac wrote:
       | A programmer is getting ready to go buy groceries, and his wife
       | tells him: "Buy a butter. If they have eggs, buy ten."
       | 
       | A little later he returns from the shop, carrying ten butters.
       | "Yes dear, they had eggs."
        
       | bronzecarnage wrote:
       | I'm a little late, but here goes.
       | 
       | How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
       | 
       | (None. It's a hardware problem)
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | RT @HackerNewsOnion: Developer accused of unreadable code refuses
       | to comment.
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | Boy: dad, why the sun rises on the east and sets on the west?
       | Programmer: did you see that? Boy: yes, I did. Programmer: does
       | it always works? Boy: yes. Programmer: don't touch anything.
        
       | Cyberspy wrote:
       | I actually bought this T-shirt for my daughter.It said:
       | 
       | !false It's funny, because it's true!
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | tuxychandru wrote:
       | What is the collective noun for programmers?
       | 
       | Merge conflict.
        
         | DamnInteresting wrote:
         | So close...it should be "What is the collective noun for
         | 'programmer'?"
        
       | skinkestek wrote:
       | DevopsBorat on Twitter used to be funny (it is now replaced with
       | spam).
       | 
       | But when it still was up the last joke there was along the lines
       | of: "at work we introduced gamification, three strikes and you
       | are out".
        
       | winterismute wrote:
       | I've got an old one, not really however focused on programming.
       | 
       | <<A physicist, a computer scientist and a mathematician find
       | themselves in prison. They all brag to each other that thanks to
       | their superior knowledge, they will manage to escape relatively
       | soon, and decide to bet they will be all out by one month. In the
       | following month, the phyisicist gathers leftofers from meals,
       | steals a few products from the janitors, and manages to assemble
       | a corrosive substance that breaks the bars of his cell. He is out
       | in 3 weeks. The computer scientist uses his weekly phonecalls to
       | hack into the prison system, little by little. He manages to set
       | the bars of his cell to open automatically right on the night of
       | the 30th day, when he escapes. Out of his cell, he decides to go
       | and check on his friends: the physicist is gone, instead the
       | mathematician is dead in his cell in front of a long text on a
       | wall which starts with "Proof: I will escape from prison.
       | Reductio ad absurdum: let's assume I am already out of the
       | prison...">>
        
       | elwell wrote:
       | Foo walks into a bar...
        
       | redmattred wrote:
       | I have a bunch up at https://www.codepuns.com
       | 
       | So a programming language walks into a bar and says "hello world"
        
       | whoisburbansky wrote:
       | When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb.
        
       | ingojoseph wrote:
       | A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables, walks up to
       | them and says 'Can I join you?'
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | RT @bradneuberg: Moore's Law giveth, JavaScript taketh away.
        
         | alisonkisk wrote:
         | Original version: what Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.
        
           | avmich wrote:
           | What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away.
        
       | mijoharas wrote:
       | A physicist, a mathematician and a programmer are in a car
       | driving on a windy mountain path. All of a sudden as they round a
       | corner, the brakes fail. After a few terrifying moments, the car
       | skids to a halt and they emerged unscathed.
       | 
       | The physicist thinks for a second, and says "It must be the lower
       | pressure due to the air, it's made some of our brake fluid
       | evaporate, we should get some more brake fluid before we get back
       | in the car." The mathematician says "No if we calculate the rate
       | of a evaporation we'd never lose that much. It must be a leak in
       | the lines. We should fix the leak before we get back in" The
       | programmer says "Let's get back in the car and see if it's
       | reproducible."
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | dboreham wrote:
       | Math joke:
       | 
       | Always take care you don't get Descartes before Deshorse.
        
       | jjgreen wrote:
       | How many Prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
       | 
       | :- False
        
         | z5h wrote:
         | This is my GOTO programming joke.
        
         | piinbinary wrote:
         | Can Prolog be used to create AI?
         | 
         | :- No.
        
         | arthurcolle wrote:
         | Haha this one is great
        
       | anotherevan wrote:
       | "The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a
       | programmer is doing until it's too late." -- Seymour Cray
        
       | canjobear wrote:
       | Syntactic sugar leads to cancer of the semicolon
        
         | emme wrote:
         | By Alan Perlis
        
       | BerislavLopac wrote:
       | What is the difference between a junior and a senior programmer?
       | 
       | The junior thinks that a kilobyte has 1000 bytes; a senior thinks
       | that a kilometre has 1024 metres.
        
       | firefoxd wrote:
       | Then I'll happily introduce you to https://bar.com
        
       | goatcode wrote:
       | Why do programmers wear costumes to Christmas parties? Because
       | DEC 25 = OCT 31.
        
         | arthurcolle wrote:
         | Damn 0o31 actually does equal 25, that's great. Evidence of
         | simulation theory, clearly ;)
        
       | nickburlett wrote:
       | DEC WARS is full of great computer jokes. It's a 1983 Usenet
       | posting by Alan Hastings and Steve Tarr:
       | https://www.bsd.org/decwars.html
       | 
       | > It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a
       | hidden directory, have won their first victory against the evil
       | Administrative Empire. During the battle, User spies managed to
       | steal secret source code to the Empire's ultimate program: the
       | Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with enough power to
       | destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's
       | sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0: races aboard her shell
       | script, custodian of the stolen listings that could save her
       | people, and restore freedom and games to the network...
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | yupomfra wrote:
       | One Shot Keto Reviews
       | 
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       | arrived with the sure-shot motive to quickly trim down the fats
       | in your body and to remove each of the fatty toxins so that you
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       | the doctors with great care there shall be no way for your fatty
       | cells of returning and hence this new curvy shape shall stay with
       | you always. Also, the user is required to use zero other
       | medication along with this which is a great advantage.
       | 
       | http://supplementstore4u.com/one-shot-keto-reviews/
       | 
       | https://sites.google.com/view/one-shot-keto-canada-order/
       | 
       | https://hype.news/one-shot-keto-reviews-um/one-shot-keto-rev...
       | 
       | http://supplementstore4u.com/
       | 
       | https://jerryshins.medium.com/one-shot-keto-reviews-official...
       | 
       | https://www.tripoto.com/trip/one-shot-keto-get-instant-disco...
       | 
       | https://gocrowdera.com/US/other/one-shot-keto-review/
       | 
       | https://one-shot-keto-reviews.business.site/
       | 
       | https://m.facebook.com/supplementstore4uofficial/posts/41588...
       | 
       | https://www.prlog.org/12854339-one-shot-keto-reviews-up-to-5...
       | 
       | https://www.prfree.org/@wondersheman/one-shot-keto-pills-get...
       | 
       | https://our.news/2021/01/20/one-shot-keto-official-website-u...
       | 
       | https://www.prlog.org/12854667-instahard-best-sexual-pills-i...
        
       | AlexITC wrote:
       | What's the jira ticket that even non-programmers are aware of?
       | COVID-19
        
       | mindcrime wrote:
       | Not exactly programming per-se, but cute:
       | 
       | A mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, and a software
       | engineer from Microsoft are in a car together, driving to a
       | conference. They start down a hill when the brakes give out and
       | they crash into a tree at the bottom of the hill. Luckily no one
       | is seriously injured, and they set out to figure out what
       | happened. The mechanical engineer examines the car and says "I
       | believe a brake line was over-pressured and burst, causing the
       | crash." The electrical engineer looks and say "No, I think it was
       | a short-circuit in the anti-lock braking system." The Microsoft
       | guy stays quiet, so the other two look at him and ask "What do
       | you think happened?" He looks up and say "I don't know, but let's
       | push the car back to the top of the hill and try again."
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | A newly wed software engineer from Microsoft and his wife are
       | going to visit her family in the mountains. For some reason they
       | have to travel separately and she arrives before him. After a
       | while the phone rings and the new wife's dad answers. It's the
       | husband. He says "Tell everybody I'll be there in 5 minutes." 35
       | minutes pass and the phone rings again. The husband says "Tell
       | everybody I'll be there in 2 hours." A minute later he calls
       | again and says "Tell everybody I'll be there in 14 minutes." 45
       | minutes later the phone rings again and the dad answers and says
       | "You're the guy who designed the Windows progress bar dialog
       | aren't you?"
        
         | thayne wrote:
         | I once worked on making a progress bar for a process that had a
         | known number of tasks. Unfortunately not all tasks would take
         | the same amount of time, and it was impossible to know the
         | relative amount of time each task would take beforehand. I did
         | the logical thing, and had the progress bar advance 1/nth every
         | time a task completed, with an animation to make it less
         | jarring. A few weeks later, the product manager came to me and
         | told me I needed to make it so the progress bar kept slowly
         | moving up if no tasks were completed for a certain amount of
         | time, so the user would know that work was still being done.
         | Fine. But what happens if the task takes so long that it goes
         | past the mark for the next completed task? Well, when the task
         | is actually completed, it moves backwards of course.
        
           | knodi123 wrote:
           | I made zeno's progress bar; it always keeps moving, but never
           | quite finishes until you send it a :done: event, at which
           | point it wastes half a second animating the remainder of the
           | progress bar. Never had a single complaint, and no one
           | noticed that it had nothing to do with what was going on
           | under the hood.
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | Like the current Windows file copy dialog, but using the
             | entire bar instead of the interval between 98% and 100%?
        
         | jolmg wrote:
         | https://xkcd.com/612/
        
       | u801e wrote:
       | Al Gore may not have invented the internet, but he did come up
       | with algorithms.
        
         | hutzlibu wrote:
         | I do not get that one. US-Insider?
        
           | CGamesPlay wrote:
           | > "Al Gore-ithms"
        
             | hutzlibu wrote:
             | Ah ..
        
           | Jtsummers wrote:
           | Al Gore was ridiculed for saying he invented the Internet (he
           | didn't say that). The rest of the joke is playing off of that
           | and then punning with his name.
        
             | andi999 wrote:
             | To be fair Gore claimed he 'took the initiative in creating
             | the internet'. His choice of words were not good I think.
        
               | Jtsummers wrote:
               | If that were the only sentence in the statement, sure.
               | But read the rest (which I believe you found if you can
               | quote it) and it's clear what he's saying unless your
               | objective is to misquote it and ridicule him.
        
               | cgriswald wrote:
               | I agree with GP. The statement made sense to Gore but not
               | to the bulk of his audience. The missing context isn't in
               | the words that follow. It's in understanding the role
               | Gore actually took in the creation of the internet;
               | specifically to be its economic, legal, and political
               | champion for basically decades.
        
               | andi999 wrote:
               | "I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And
               | it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it
               | will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I
               | feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue
               | with the American people. I've traveled to every part of
               | this country during the last six years. During my service
               | in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
               | creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving
               | forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to
               | be important to our country's economic growth and
               | environmental protection, improvements in our educational
               | system."
               | 
               | That's what I read from Wikipedia, I do not really see
               | how this changes the statement.
        
               | imtringued wrote:
               | Definitively a poor choice of words. What he really meant
               | was "I funded ARPANET, the basis for the Internet"
        
               | andi999 wrote:
               | Better, but still a bit shaky. Probabl 'I refunded
               | Arpanet...' (in 1991 Gore Bill). Arpanet was started in
               | 1966, and he is not that old. It is clear Gore was an
               | important supporter of the expansion of the internet, but
               | it is hard to put it in a catchphrase with doesnt sound
               | like 'first I created heaven and earth...'
        
           | ppezaris wrote:
           | Al-gore-ithms.
        
         | rramadass wrote:
         | Underappreciated; was a new one for me.
        
           | fuzzfactor wrote:
           | To explain algorithms a little more clearly to less
           | mathematical students I actually introduce traditional
           | logarithms in case they are not familiar, in terms that are
           | easier to understand.
           | 
           | For instance in a remote river with lumberjacks dancing on
           | logjams without falling in the water, that's a type of
           | logarithm at work.
           | 
           | When Al Gore does it, that's an algorithm.
        
       | joverholt wrote:
       | An IPv6 packet walks into a bar, no one responds
        
       | injb wrote:
       | Two people are taking part in a scientific study to investigate
       | people's approaches to problem solving. One of the two is an
       | engineer, the other is a mathematician.
       | 
       | The researchers set up an experiment by putting a sink, an empty
       | bucket and a waste paper bin in a small room. Then they set the
       | bin on fire, and call the engineer in to see how he approaches
       | the problem.
       | 
       | The engineer takes a quick look around, assesses the situation,
       | and then takes the bucket, fills it with water at the sink, and
       | pours it on the fire.
       | 
       | The experiment is then set up again and repeated, this time with
       | the mathematician. Like the engineer, he quickly fills the bucket
       | and puts out the fire.
       | 
       | Next, a slight variation is made to the experiment: it's the same
       | as before, _except_ that the bucket is filled with water in
       | advance.
       | 
       | As before, the engineer goes first. Upon seeing the fire, and the
       | bucket full of water, he pours the water on the fire without
       | hesitation, and all is well. The team nod to each other and
       | mumble approvingly, writing the results on their clipboards.
       | 
       | Now it's the mathematician's turn again. The team resets the
       | experiment and calls in the mathematician. He looks around at the
       | situation, and sees the bucket of water, the sink and the burning
       | bin. He then calmly picks up the bucket, pours the water down the
       | sink, puts the bucket back down, and stands back. "There you go",
       | he says, "done!".
       | 
       | The researchers look at him, and at each other in total
       | bewilderment. "What do you mean, 'done'" they ask, "the bin is
       | still on fire!".
       | 
       | "Yes", says the mathematician, "but I've reduced it to a
       | previously solved problem.
        
       | aaccount wrote:
       | "I am a programmer"
        
       | lhorie wrote:
       | Apparently a true story:
       | 
       | A guy was walking around in a Ruby conference with a shirt that
       | said ":sex" (which is read "sex symbol" in Ruby). Until someone
       | asked him: "I don't get it. Why colon sex?"
        
         | dariusj18 wrote:
         | C:##
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | C:ENTER:###
           | 
           | (album title)
        
           | mPReDiToR wrote:
           | 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 (PS)" in
           | American.
        
             | kcartlidge wrote:
             | One possible cause of confusion in terms of a hash (#)
             | being called pound (PS) 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 PS (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 (PS) character that we were seeing on our end.
        
             | milkrocks wrote:
             | #MeToo always felt awkward and not well thought out.
        
             | dariusj18 wrote:
             | I guess it would prevent that kind of misunderstanding if
             | the joke was written "C:PSPS", but then again, the slight
             | misreading I think adds to the joke when it is gotten.
        
             | mnw21cam wrote:
             | The register[1] quite conclusively determined that the
             | symbol was pronounced "splat".
             | 
             | [1] https://www.theregister.com/2002/07/04/why_microsoft_ma
             | kes_a...
        
         | amingilani wrote:
         | As a Rubyist I laughed at that so hard my wife woke up. I work
         | with Python on a daily basis now but I need to make a SFW
         | variant and show it to the Ruby team.
        
       | hutzlibu wrote:
       | The famous cartoon on software developement:
       | 
       | https://www.smart-jokes.org/how-it-projects-really-work.html
        
       | sriku wrote:
       | https://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/...
       | 
       | A classi one by Anton van Straaten that is both funny and wise.
        
       | zhoujianfu wrote:
       | A physicist, chemist, and programmer were going to lunch
       | together.
       | 
       | When they got in the car though, it wouldn't start.
       | 
       | "Maybe it's out of gas?" said the Chemist.
       | 
       | "Maybe it's a problem with the engine?" said the Physicist.
       | 
       | "Maybe if we all just get out of the car and get back in."
        
         | avmich wrote:
         | "Maybe if we all just close all windows, turn off the car, get
         | out of the car and get back in."
        
           | bryanrasmussen wrote:
           | the closing of the windows suggestion is historically
           | supposed to be made by a Microsoft Certified Engineer.
        
           | sli wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | shimonabi wrote:
             | In my car, I have to disconnect the battery when the cheap
             | 30$ Chinese radio freezes.
        
               | berkes wrote:
               | I have a 37 year old car. The (classic looking) Bluetooth
               | radio is by far the most complicated electronics on
               | board.
               | 
               | When I switch off the car, for safety, anti-theft and
               | leaking, the battery is disconnected entirely with a key.
               | 
               | The radio looses everything: paired devices, position of
               | radio tuner, volume, BT/aux/radio mode etc. Whenever you
               | start the car, you'll need to mash at least five buttons
               | and knobs to either find a radio station or reconnect
               | Bluetooth. Modern tech is often so smart it becomes dumb
               | again.
        
               | w0mbat wrote:
               | You haven't wired it properly. If there is no constant
               | power wire just run one from the battery.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | the_pwner224 wrote:
               | Put a toggle switch somewhere in the cabin and splice it
               | between the car radio power wires and the battery. So you
               | can easily reboot the radio without having to mess around
               | under the hood.
        
               | thejenk wrote:
               | A push button normally closed momentary switch would be
               | pretty slick too. Also it would probably be best to put
               | it on the ground wire. Car radios will have at least two
               | power wires, one for constant power (which keeps the
               | clock set, and favourite stations programmed), and one
               | switched accessory power to command it on.
               | 
               | Then again, a new $30 radio would be slicker still.
        
               | shimonabi wrote:
               | I bought a mechanical switch that is installed on the
               | negative terminal of the battery.
               | 
               | The radio drained my battery in 2 weeks, an absolute
               | horror in Covid times when the car is in "long term
               | storage".
        
             | bryanrasmussen wrote:
             | must make road trips fun.
        
             | jeffrallen wrote:
             | I had a Fiat Panda where the way to get power steering back
             | after it flaked out was to do that. While driving.
        
               | mPReDiToR wrote:
               | Did you ever figure out that putting the clutch in,
               | turning the engine off, moving the key back to the
               | running position and releasing the clutch was the easiest
               | way to do it? I have had several cars I've had to do this
               | in. Latest was a 2003 Vauxhall Vectra (Opel?) which
               | needed this to get out of "limp mode" if you accelerated
               | in 5th gear above 55mph. Ain't cars fab?
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | aidenn0 wrote:
             | I will buy an electric car when they make one that doesn't
             | require me to use a touchscreen.
        
         | dmckeon wrote:
         | A salesman, an engineer, and a programmer drive a rental car up
         | Pikes Peak. On the way down, the brakes fade, and the one
         | driving manages to skid to a stop in a cloud of dust at the
         | edge of a precipice.
         | 
         | The salesman wants to call for a tow truck, the engineer wants
         | to try to fix the brakes, but the programmer says: "No, first
         | we should drive back up and confirm that we can reproduce the
         | issue."
        
         | yetihehe wrote:
         | I had a car with wonky turbo, where if you tried to push it too
         | hard, turbine was disabled and you were left with very low
         | power engine (but engine still worked). Briefly turning off
         | ignition and turning it back on would restart turbine back to
         | normal.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kaladin_1 wrote:
       | #LordOfTheRings To enter the Doors of Durin: "Say mellon and
       | enter"
       | 
       | #Vim To enter external commands: "Say :! and enter"
        
       | simon_acca wrote:
       | I would tell you a joke about UDP, but you might not get it
        
         | Hedepig wrote:
         | You wouldn't care if he got it anyway
        
       | praptak wrote:
       | "Telling a programmer that there already is a library for X is
       | like telling a songwriter that a song about love already exists."
        
       | devoutsalsa wrote:
       | This is a variation on a joke I heard from the nerdy comedian Don
       | McMillian... [1]
       | 
       | I used to work at JPL, and I could tell what anyone's job was by
       | asking them one question... What is Pi?
       | 
       | Ask a mathematician, and they will say "Pi is ratio of a circle's
       | circumference to its circle."
       | 
       | Ask a physicist, and they will say "Pi is 3.141592653589793."
       | 
       | Ask an engineer, and they will say "Pi is about 3, but just to be
       | safe, let's call it 4."
       | 
       | Ask a programmer, and they will say "I'd write you a program to
       | calculate that, but I don't have enough time to figure out how to
       | do that quickly & precisely, and I don't feel like getting in a
       | fight w/ QA over a program that approximates Pi, so what you
       | probably want is the constant hardcoded into the Math library or
       | something you find on Stackoverflow."
       | 
       | Ask a manager, and they will say "When do you need to know by?"
       | 
       | [1] Don McMillan - Greatest Charts (Volume 1) --
       | https://youtu.be/LYE3GtXqDV0
        
         | atulatul wrote:
         | >Ask a mathematician, and they will say "Pi is ratio of a
         | circle's circumference to its circle."
         | 
         | its diameter.
        
           | devoutsalsa wrote:
           | Damn typo!
        
       | mrjin wrote:
       | Wife told her husband: Buy two watermelons on your way home, if
       | you see eggs, buy a dozen. So the husband went home with a dozen
       | watermelons.
        
       | chrisweekly wrote:
       | "What Do We Want?"
       | 
       | "NOW!"
       | 
       | "ASYNC FUNCTIONS!"
       | 
       | "When Do We Want It?"
        
       | breck wrote:
       | There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
       | 
       | Those that understand binary and those that don't.
        
         | akeck wrote:
         | There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
         | 
         | Those that understand binary, those that don't, and those who
         | weren't expecting a ternary joke.
        
           | SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
           | There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
           | 
           | Those who understand binary, those who don't, and those who
           | understand that "10" can represent any number if you change
           | the base.
           | 
           | (Changing joke this to work amusingly for irrational bases
           | like the golden ratio base[1] is something I haven't yet
           | figured out.)
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio_base
        
           | umvi wrote:
           | Pro tip: if you want to get someone a birthday card, just get
           | them a card that says "10 years old!" on the front. Then use
           | a sharpie to put an asterisk after the "10" and then on the
           | inside of the card put: "* (in base X)", where X is how many
           | years they are turning. Worked well for my 2 year old
           | daughter as well as my 57 year old dad.
        
       | tincholio wrote:
       | This is not exactly a joke, and more CS than programming related,
       | but it's worth the read: Lower Bounds for Probably-istic
       | Polynomial Time.
       | http://web.archive.org/web/20080516195038/http://cs-people.b...
        
       | GnarfGnarf wrote:
       | A physicist, a chemist and a statistician go hunting.
       | 
       | The physicist aims his rifle at a deer, shoots, and misses six
       | feet to the right.
       | 
       | The chemist aims, shoots, and misses six feet to the left.
       | 
       | The statistician exclaims "By golly we got him!"
        
       | yread wrote:
       | It's a bit more mathematical then programming but aren't we all
       | just shitty mathematicians anyway:
       | 
       | Little John goes to school for the first day. The teacher wants
       | to assess what do the kids already know so she asks
       | 
       | "Who knows how much is 1+2?".
       | 
       | Little John raises his hand and says
       | 
       | "I don't know how much is 1+2 but I do know that it's the same as
       | 2+1 as addition is commutative over the monoid of natural
       | numbers"
        
         | mijoharas wrote:
         | I've got a related joke.
         | 
         | A mathematician walks into the room looking distraught. His
         | wife asks him what's wrong, and he says he's worried their
         | child has a learning disorder.
         | 
         | She asks why. He says he was trying to teach their child how to
         | add, but he couldn't even understand zermelo-frankael set
         | theory, so there was no way he'd learn how to add numbers
         | before kindergarten.
        
       | avmich wrote:
       | 10 programmers decided to make a product, One asked "Where's the
       | money?", And there were 9 of them left.
       | 
       | 9 programmers appeared before the boss One of them did not know
       | FoxPro, and there were 8 of them left.
       | 
       | 8 programmers bought IBM, One said "Mac is better!" And there are
       | 7 of them left.
       | 
       | 7 programmers wanted to read help, One of them got bad block on
       | the disk, and there are 6 of them left.
       | 
       | 6 programmers tried to understand the code, One of them went
       | crazy and there are 5 of them left.
       | 
       | 5 programmers bought a CD-ROM, One brought a Chinese disc - there
       | were four left.
       | 
       | 4 programmers worked in C, One of them praised Pascal, and there
       | were 3 of them.
       | 
       | 3 programmers on the net played DOOM, One hesitated a little, and
       | the score was equal to two.
       | 
       | 2 programmers typed together: "win" One tired of waiting for the
       | download - there was only 1 left.
       | 
       | 1 programmer took control of everything, But he met with the
       | user, and there were 0 of them left.
       | 
       | 0 programmers were scolded by an angry boss, Then he fired one,
       | and it became their FF.
        
       | wrnr wrote:
       | Nock nock, who's there? ... ... ... Java
        
       | seer wrote:
       | Not exactly programming jocks, more like tech jokes, but I
       | remember http://bash.org/?top to be an amazing source of humor
       | back when I had my first steps as a techie 15 years ago
       | 
       | Also a more long form source of funny developer anecdotes was
       | https://thedailywtf.com/
        
       | taspeotis wrote:
       | Knock knock
       | 
       | Who's there?
       | 
       |  _long pause_
       | 
       | Java
        
         | bjoli wrote:
         | What do we want?
         | 
         | GARBAGE COLLECTION!
         | 
         | When do we want it?
         | 
         | ...
         | 
         | ...
         | 
         | NOW!
        
       | real-dino wrote:
       | Friend: Congratulations on the child, is it a boy or a girl?
       | 
       | Programmer: Yes.
        
       | tppiotrowski wrote:
       | Two engineers are attempting to measure the height of a pole in
       | the ground but as they extend their tape measure towards the sky
       | it keeps collapsing. A mathematician walks by and asks what they
       | are doing and they say they're trying to figure out the height.
       | The mathematician pulls the pole out of the ground and lays it
       | down. He measures it and says "It's 16 feet". As he's walking
       | away one engineer shakes his head and says, "Mathematicians...you
       | ask them for the height and they give you the length!"
        
       | AnimalMuppet wrote:
       | #ifdef GET_A_HEARING_AID
       | 
       | (From the Bad C Pun Contest, 1992, C/C++ User's Journal. I've
       | never forgotten it.)
        
       | tj-teej wrote:
       | A boy and a girl are sitting next to each other in a Java
       | Computer Science class.
       | 
       | The boy reaches over and starts going through the girls purse.
       | 
       | The girl says: "Hey! That's private!"
       | 
       | The boy replies: "But we're in the same class!"
        
         | drran wrote:
         | C programmer vs Java programmer
         | 
         | -- Your Java is slow!
         | 
         | -- This is because it is written in C!
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | C++:
         | 
         | Friends can access each other's private members in a public
         | class.
        
       | yongjik wrote:
       | > Kubernetes is an Ancient Greek word meaning "More containers
       | than customers."
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/srbaker/status/1002286820078571532
        
         | guiriduro wrote:
         | Brilliant.
        
       | rangibaby wrote:
       | Windows ME
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | Starting Windows ...
        
       | gmfawcett wrote:
       | Two programmers walk up to the bar. The first one orders a beer.
       | "Sure. And for you?" says the bartender to the second one. The
       | second programmer replies, "Thanks, I'll have a"
       | 
       | The bartender waits a minute for him to finish. He asks the first
       | one, "What's wrong with your friend?" The programmer replies,
       | "He's a Haskell programmer. He's waiting for you to bring him his
       | drink before he finishes ordering it."
        
       | imvetri wrote:
       | Why programmer gets a raise? Because he likes arrays.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | breck wrote:
       | The 2 problems you can never completely eliminate in your code
       | are the need for tests, suboptimal names, and off by one errors.
        
         | jkingsbery wrote:
         | The way I heard this (https://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/5
         | 06010907021828096?l...) was "There are two hard problems in
         | computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off by
         | one errors."
         | 
         | Still good though.
        
       | smcameron wrote:
       | These are both old, like me:
       | 
       | There's a new object-oriented version of COBOL. It's called "Add
       | 1 to COBOL".
       | 
       | (Carbon dates back to the ancient time when C++ was basically
       | object oriented C, so like, 1988 or so.)
       | 
       | Here's one for the increasingly elderly people who prefer C over
       | C++. "Whoever invented C++ doesn't know the difference between
       | increment and excrement." (Best said in a cranky old man voice at
       | an appropriate moment whilst battling a bug in some big C++
       | source base. Yeah, I know who Bjarne Stroustrup is. It's funnier
       | with "whoever".)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | chrisbennet wrote:
       | !false
       | 
       | It's funny because it's true.
        
       | JoeAltmaier wrote:
       | Professor: "Computer Science is to Math as sex is to
       | masturbation"
       | 
       | Student: "Do you mean both are good but one is ultimately empty?"
       | 
       | Professor: "No, I mean you will spend most of undergrad doing
       | math"
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | How many IBM employees does it take to change a light bulb?
       | 
       | Fifteen. Five to do it, and ten to write document number
       | GC7500439-001, Multitasking Incadescent Source System Facility,
       | of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally
       | left blank".
        
         | jwalton wrote:
         | How many prolog programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
         | 
         | no
        
         | kabdib wrote:
         | How many IBM 360s does it take to execute a job?
         | 
         | Three: Two to hold it down, one to cut its head off.
        
         | dwd wrote:
         | Make that at least 17 when you count the employee + lawyer who
         | file the patent.
        
       | atq2119 wrote:
       | The best thing about NaN jokes is that they're all different.
        
       | GnarfGnarf wrote:
       | Two elderly women are talking. One of them admits after marrying
       | three times, she's still a virgin.
       | 
       | "How is that possible?" asks her friend.
       | 
       | "Well, the first one was too old and couldn't do it. The second
       | was gay and wouldn't do it".
       | 
       | "The third one was a computer salesman and all he did was sit on
       | the edge of the bed telling me how great it was going to be."
       | 
       | (From the 70's days of the million-dollar mainframes)
        
         | ghego1 wrote:
         | Then she married a lawyer and finally she got fu**d
        
       | drakudo wrote:
       | Who's here still remembers protoLOL? https://protolol.com/
        
         | jaytaylor wrote:
         | "I once went to an ARP restaurant. Thank god I didn't eat the
         | food! It was poisoned.."
        
       | slightwinder wrote:
       | None
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-21 23:03 UTC)