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When people think about programmers, the image that pops into their head is probably a person who is hunched over a computer in a dark corner, relentlessly tapping away on the keyboard with no contact with the outside world. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, just like in any other industry, developers come from various backgrounds and have different personalities, making them a diverse group.  

To learn more about the day-to-day lives of programmers, we are once again visiting the Programmer Humor subreddit, which is full of jokes and memes perfectly capturing the chaos and struggles of this profession. Scroll down to find them, and don’t forget to check out a conversation with software engineers Evgeny Klimenchenko and Ben Grimwade from the UK, who kindly agreed to tell us more about programming humor.

#2

Thestruggleisreal

Thestruggleisreal

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Beeps
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Last week I fixed a monitor in the office that had been “broken” for a week and that several people had already tried to fix. And yes, you guessed it how I “fixed” it. And I don’t even work in IT.

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#3

Programmercooks

Programmercooks

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LuckyL
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

but then you find out that your pot no longer works on your new induction stove, the carrot is moldy and the peeler is in the dishwasher anyway.

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Software engineer Evgeny Klimenchenko from the UK believes that the stereotype of programmers being antisocial and dull is quite misleading. 

“Programmers often have a rich sense of humour that's often related to their line of work. Their jokes might be technical, but they're definitely there and can be quite witty. Because programmers' humour is quite technical and full of industry jargon, a lot of people don't understand it, and that leads to them believing that we don't have a sense of humour.”

#5

Fastfollow

Fastfollow

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There's a lot of information available about this. ANY software that goes to space is insanely safe. There are so many rules about this. For instance, none of the devices have an "off" instruction. Just to make sure no one can hit it on accident. The code that goes up to space is horrible by human standards and for a reason, it's designed to be terrible. It's designed to be fixable by sending lines of HEX or Binary to fix it. There's an encryption obviously which is the only thing stopping ME from altering the code on those satellites and rovers. But the reason it can keep working without a dead chip is called "Fault tolerance". CD's have it too. It's really clever. Check this: ------ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jsijhllIA

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#6

Guyswehaveanenemy

Guyswehaveanenemy

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Beeps
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Oh this is evil. I’m stealing this, but only for badly designed surveys.

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Meanwhile, software engineer Ben Grimwade says, “As with any other group or industry, there are those that joke more and those that joke less. I personally feel that if you aren’t having fun and making jokes at work, you are missing out on life. We spend more time at work than with our families, so have fun doing it.”

#8

Everyprojectmanagerever

Everyprojectmanagerever

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JoinMeZoe
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They cut the baby in to nine, each spend a month raising it, then build it back. Simple!

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As Klimenchenko already mentioned, programming humor is quite niche, overflowing with industry jargon. “It often revolves around different programming languages, algorithms, and software quirks. Programmers love to poke fun at their own challenges and the absurdities they are faced with on a day-to-day basis. We also love our puns,” he fondly shares.

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Grimwade adds that programming humor is generally quite dry and leans toward being more sarcastic than what you would find in other areas of life or even professions. 

Klimenchenko shares that the most popular ongoing inside joke among developers that reflects their struggles perfectly is “It works on my machine." He explains that it’s a good way to deflect a code that doesn’t run elsewhere. “Everyone understands that this is just a joke, and if it works on one machine, it should work on most.”

#13

Stillbetterthanlibreoffice

Stillbetterthanlibreoffice

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Robert T
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They were going to cancel it, but someone laid the schedule out in a table... ;-)

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#14

Googling

Googling

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Jon Steensen
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

googleling is an artform - especially when you don't even know the name of the thing you are looking for. Furthermore the internet has now become so poluted with all kinds of made up nonsense, that knowing how to filter it out, so you only get the usefull parts, is a great skill.

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#15

Oddlyspecific

Oddlyspecific

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Robert T
Community Member
1 month ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They wanted a bigger byte of the market! I'd laugh even louder if the previous limit was 16, as that's just a nibble!!!

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“Another one is we love our "Infinite Loops" jokes—jokes about code that never stops running. Or similarly jokes about "recursions," that one might be hard to explain, haha,” adds Klimenchenko.

#16

Icanseewhereistheissue

Icanseewhereistheissue

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Jrog
Community Member
1 month ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This refers to the July 19, 2024 outage of all Crowdstrike services, that caused $5.4 billion in losses in what might be considered "the largest IT outage in history", all stemming from a single faulty software update pushed on a Friday afternoon (a big no-no). CrowdStrike supplies a security software called Falcon to thousand of companies. The software embeds itself into the Windows kernel, and the update made impossible to boot the PCs affected.

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#17

Chadrecursioncode

Chadrecursioncode

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

here;s this infinite paradox loop in Python: def process_wishes(wishes): wish1 = lambda: not wishes[1]() # Do opposite of next wish wish2 = lambda: not wishes[2]() # Don't fulfill third wish wish3 = lambda: not wishes[0]() # Ignore first wish wishes = [wish1, wish2, wish3] try: result = wishes[0]() print("Wishes processed successfully") return result except RecursionError: print("Stack overflow: Infinite wish loop detected") raise except Exception as e: print(f"Critical error: {str(e)}") raise

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Grimwade additionally tells us that programmers love a good pun and often joke about the plethora of misunderstandings that happen with other departments. “Like the sales teams that sell software to clients telling the clients that we already have it (when we don’t), and then tell us to write it by the next day, or the product team who tell customers how the system should work and then tell us something different.”

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#19

Leadershipmindset

Leadershipmindset

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BeesEelsAndPups
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Awww. I do try to be a good senior dev. I hope I make the junior devs feel good about their work.

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#20

Thoughtyouwereinvisiblehuhthinkagain

Thoughtyouwereinvisiblehuhthinkagain

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Robert T
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Incognito browsing only prevents your browser from recording your actions, not the servers you interact with. So if you Google something whilst in incognito mode, Google still records it.

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#21

Wardeclaration

Wardeclaration

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"function peace() { // TODO: Implement world peace throw new Error('Not implemented yet'); }"

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If you’re interested in knowing even more about the tech world or are a beginner looking for guidance, both engineers have written various articles helping others navigate the industry more easily. For instance, Grimwade has published a post on how to ace a software engineering interview where he shares various tips and tricks. On Klimenchenko’s blog, you can find how to build an app only using Copilot and an article explaining that front-end testing is for everyone.

#22

Humorprogrammingadvancethisis

Humorprogrammingadvancethisis

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#23

Betyourlifeonmycode

Betyourlifeonmycode

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Several people were killed because of it, but honestly if you look at the numbers; kilometres driven by humans divided by accidents still exceeds the same equation driven by "AI". And George Hotz absolutely f*****g SMASHED this with a piece of software he wrote for phones and obliterates anything written by multi-trillion dollar companies

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#24

Techstartupsbelike

Techstartupsbelike

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BeesEelsAndPups
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That is the valuation if the startup is in San Fransisco. The exact same company with the exact same product and same developers started in New York is worth $200 million. Started in Chicago it's worth $100 million. Started in Philadelphia it's worth $500 thousand. Company valuations are purely based on perception, and not on reality. It's why Tesla is worth more than every other car manufacturer on Earth put together.

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Klimenchenko signed off by saying, “It's wonderful to see programming humour getting the spotlight! It's a great way to bring the community together and make the field more approachable to others.”

#25

Whatversionareyouusing

Whatversionareyouusing

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Marianne
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I don't know about Java, but some programs can only be used in old versions, because all the updates just make them worse and worse. (Here in Germany, we call that "verschlimmbessern".)

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#26

Geniedislikescloud

Geniedislikescloud

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Makenzie McNeal
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well I'd buy a lot of things like multiple plot of land in good places with that money then I'd use most of the billion dollars building houses on them to sell or rent out :)

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#27

Itsmostlybussinesspeopleoverthere

Itsmostlybussinesspeopleoverthere

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#30

Stilljunior

Stilljunior

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Savahax
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1 month ago

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#31

Twofriedegg

Twofriedegg

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#32

Somethingaiwillneverreplace

Somethingaiwillneverreplace

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BeesEelsAndPups
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The two hardest things in programming are Cache Invalidation, Naming Things, and Off by 1 Errors.

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#33

Sometimes

Sometimes

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#34

Lookingatyouwindows

Lookingatyouwindows

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

HA!!! If only it were that simple. While standardizing on forward slashes would be nice, we'd still need to deal with drive letters, case sensitivity, and a million other compatibility issues which only Microsoft handles well. No one else uses C: as a path lol xD but at least we have path libraries in most languages now. I remember the days of manually constructing paths with string concatenation, not that that was better but talk about this madness and people look at you as if you're a grandpa or an idiot. I literally remember having to manually code paths what API's do in 3 lines now. I used to need 400. Which is better? And i'm "omly" 36 years old. Short time to make the world r******d as it is now

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#35

Sorryfutureme

Sorryfutureme

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Tom Scott is an absolute legend even though he never wrote any meaningful code. He helped a lot of people gain knowledge

#37

Whatawonderfullife

Whatawonderfullife

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#40

Myconcentrationwillnotbebroken

Myconcentrationwillnotbebroken

tekbog Report

#41

Thedevisdivorcedandbroke

Thedevisdivorcedandbroke

its-MAGNETIC Report

#43

Copilotknowseverything

Copilotknowseverything

ululonoH Report

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ArcanaPanda
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Meanwhile I'm all, "Stop screaming, dude, I'm not even done here, why are you always so dramatic"

#45

Penandpapercodingisbad

Penandpapercodingisbad

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

JAVA uses this, and it's awesome. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a newb high level programmer, but JAVA is good. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you want to get into programming JAVA provides everything you need. PLEASE PLEASE do not get hung up about other programmer's conventions. JAVA makes money, no you will not learn the "low level" stuff seasoned programmers know but it's the best start. Python is too easy, C is too complicated, C# is too "Windows" (but I absolutely recommend) and C++ can be offputting. Start with Java. Here's the thing; we all have our preferences but the bottom line is this; you can't program now, learn ANY language and you can. THAT'S the only thing that matters

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#46

Wearefucked

Wearefucked

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Jrog
Community Member
1 month ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Uhm... no. It was not the free market, it was HER who willfully decided that doing TikToks and p*rn on OF is easier than working a factory job, an option that most machinist don't have btw. It was not "the free market" who opened an account self-describing as "semi-pro sl*t". An Aerospace Machinist makes on average $28/hr, that is on the higher end of most specialized blue collar jobs, she decided begging for $130k from her "simps" is a better use of her time. (all from a cursory glance at her twitter profile)

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#47

Someyearslater

Someyearslater

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ArcanaPanda
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was always Team "Year X". My coding has always included good formatting and thorough comments and I've never done any programming shortcuts that wouldn't make sense to future me.

#49

Anyvolunteershere

Anyvolunteershere

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#50

Itworks

Itworks

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David Houde
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've worked with people like this. They are given calculations to make along with examples in the user story. I do the code review and they have not done the calculations at all, but instead hard coded the examples so it will pass testing. 🤦 They did not pass code review.

#51

Lowskilljobsarentreallyathing

Lowskilljobsarentreallyathing

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ArcanaPanda
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Preach! My hardest job ever was working in a boiler room-like call center fulfilling orders for products shown on TV (mostly infomercials back when those were a thing), along with the occasional credit card application. That job made me temporarily hate the world. My hat goes off to everyone who works in the service industry, and fast food workers deserve so much of our respect as well as a living wage.

#52

Latenightthoughts

Latenightthoughts

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Parmeisan
Community Member
1 month ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Took me a moment. If you need help, replace the symbols, eg. "1212" is equivalent to the first string and "1221" is equivalent to the second.

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#53

Imaginethelookonunclebobsface

Imaginethelookonunclebobsface

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BeesEelsAndPups
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I will now spend the next 6 years building a dependency injection framework for Smalltalk, and Xerox shall rule the world!! (once I also invent a time machine, which should be about as hard).

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#54

Whatstheworstthingyouvedone

Whatstheworstthingyouvedone

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Tucker Cahooter
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm always looking at code and saying "who wrote this sh*t?" and then realising it was me

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#55

Whichisbetter

Whichisbetter

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#56

Startthesufferingearly

Startthesufferingearly

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#57

Truestory

Truestory

Kebabrulle4869 Report

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Big O notation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation -- we use this quite a lot

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#59

Devsreaction

Devsreaction

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Parmeisan
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Do they actually take it, though? From what I've heard, truck drivers are incentivize for speed and penalized for anything that slow them down, including safety measures like "breaks", "peeing", and "a full night of sleep". I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I've heard. Maybe it depends what country you are in.

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#61

Technicallytrue

Technicallytrue

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#63

Cannotbelievetestspassedinonego

Cannotbelievetestspassedinonego

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#64

Forcomputers

Forcomputers

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#65

Wedonttalkaboutthat

Wedonttalkaboutthat

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Corvus
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

All this cyber security knowledge has to come from somewhere ;)

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#66

Iwillliveforever

Iwillliveforever

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wonton
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We think when our consciousness is uploaded we will still be us (reference) but in actuality it would just be a copy/simulation of us (value). More recent OOP languages would still pass this by ref so maybe we'll be ok? ;)

#67

Responsivedesigngobrrrr

Responsivedesigngobrrrr

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#69

Thiscantpossiblybebetter

Thiscantpossiblybebetter

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Savahax
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

same with the "driving" meme. I know why I did that, but whatever someone else did is dodgy

#70

Clientsidemechanics

Clientsidemechanics

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#71

Pleasestop

Pleasestop

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#74

Areyousureaboutthat

Areyousureaboutthat

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Starthief
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At the top of one of our source files there's a comment "This file is for legacy creation of ____ and earlier _____. Don't touch it, don't play with it, don't try to fix it. Just look, and try to feel better about how far we have come." The comment was added in 2012, and there have been 112 updates to that source file since then

#75

Gettersandsettersmakeyourcodebetter

Gettersandsettersmakeyourcodebetter

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#77

Idkmustbeonstartup

Idkmustbeonstartup

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#78

Bestprogramminglanguageever

Bestprogramminglanguageever

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#79

Jsonquerylanguage

Jsonquerylanguage

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#80

Sqlinjhoneypot

Sqlinjhoneypot

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#81

Pleasereportyourbugs

Pleasereportyourbugs

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#83

Newyearresolution

Newyearresolution

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#84

Whatisanemailanyway

Whatisanemailanyway

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Robert T
Community Member
1 month ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The regexp got truncated. Here it is in all it's glory: (?:[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*|"(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21\x23-\x5b\x5d-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])*")@(?:(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?|\[(?:(?:(2(5[0-5]|[0-4][0-9])|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9]))\.){3}(?:(2(5[0-5]|[0-4][0-9])|1[0-9][0-9]|[1-9]?[0-9])|[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9]:(?:[\x01-\x08\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x1f\x21-\x5a\x53-\x7f]|\\[\x01-\x09\x0b\x0c\x0e-\x7f])+)\])

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#86

Whydoesthislibraryevenexist

Whydoesthislibraryevenexist

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#87

Didimisssomething

Didimisssomething

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#88

Holyfuck

Holyfuck

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#89

Everytime

Everytime

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